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HEALTHY CHRISTD^: 



AN APPEAL TO THE CHURCH. 



BY HOWAED CEOSBY, 

PASTOB OF FOTJKTH-AVENUE PRESBYTEBIAN CHXTEOH, 
NEW YORK. 




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AMEEICAN TEACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 







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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by the 
American Teact Society, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, 
at Washington. 




PREFACE. 




ADDEESS tliis book to Christians ; to 
those who, being in Christ Jesus, walk 
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 
It is an effort to stir up pure minds by 
way of remembrance. 

The world's way of making a good Christian 
is to lead the Christian into conformity with 
itself and reduce Christianity to a matter of 
ethics, and perhaps physiology. The Bible w r ay 
is to separate the Christians from the world 
unto Christ, according to the grand truth that 
Christianity is not a code or system for mind 
and body, but a divine life, a life which is 
directly antagonistic to the world's life. The 
church is lamentably allied to the world through 
the agencies of wealth and fashion; and. it be- 
comes us to sound an alarm for Christ's sake, 
and remind the people of God of their true priv- 
ileges and responsibilities. Under the impulses 
of earthly ambition for place and riches, a ten- 
dency has been developed to bring down all 



4 PKEFACE. 

religion to the low level of a respectable nat- 
uralism, and thus dishonor God's revelation. 
Sincerity (a sincerity, too, which scorns all seek- 
ing after God) is considered quite as good as 
regeneration ; and a man is counted a Christian 
who utterly ignores the person, work, and word 
of Christ. It is considered a beautiful liberality 
to put Mohammed, Vishnu, the Virgin Mary, 
and Ormuzd on a par with Jesus, and to count 
science, reason, poetry, and revelation as equal 
authorities. This is the prevailing style of reli- 
gion that we find in the newspapers which have 
to cater to every sort of taste, and which, there- 
fore, deemed an undefined olla podrida the most 
suitable form of religion for journalism. "Weak 
souls are snared by this popular and human 
thing, and the vox populi becomes to them the 
vox Dei. The true voice of God in his revealed 
word is first neglected, then despised, then as- 
sailed. 

The only remedy for this evil is for each indi- 
vidual Christian to renew his application to that 
word, and, under its guidance, to come out and 
be separated from the world at whatever cost of 
social position, political honors, or pecuniary 
fortune. We are to trust in the Lord and go 
forward, and we shall find in him our exceed- 
ing great reward. 




<nrt 



CHAPTEK I. 
The General View - page 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Other Means of Life ~- 22 

CHAPTER III. 
The Soul's Food 37 

CHAPTER 'IV. 
The Soul's Food : Love for God's Word 53 

CHAPTER V. 

The Soul's Fresh Air - 69 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Soul's Exercise : in the Family 86 



G CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Soul's Exercise : in Church Eelations- 102 

CHAPTEE VIII. 

The Soul's Exercise : in the World without -- 117 

CHAPTEE IX. 

The Soul's Exercise : in Christian Society 131 

CHAPTEE X. 
The Soul's Exercise : in Personal Culture 147 

A Closing Word 162 




sS? 




THE 



HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 



CHAPTEE I. 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 
" That they may be sound in the 

FAITH." 

'HE old English word "sound" 

like the Greek fyaa*** f this 

passage in Paul's epistle to Titus, is 

equivalent to the ordinary English 

"healthy." The apostle urges his 

representative in Crete to secure healthiness in 

the faith to the Cretan Christians. Titus 1 : 13. 

As to the faith he speaks of, it is too often 

referred merely to doctrine. Faith in the 




8 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

gospel sense has two complementary parts; 
the one is the objective truth revealed by God 
in his word, and the other is the soul's grasp 
of that truth, the personal appropriation and 
absorption of the divine doctrine. "We have 
no right to use the words "the faith" as mean- 
ing an external creed. The article before the 
word does not give us that right, for in the 
next chapter to the one from which we have 
derived our text, we find the aged men are 
to be sound in the faith, in the charity, and in 
the patience — as the Greek has it. Now as 
the charity and the patience refer to a condi- 
tion of heart, so does the faith. "We have 
corrupted the word in our usage, and talk of 
a man's faith, when we refer only to the in- 
tellectual theses that he has chosen, for any 
purpose whatever, to write on his standard. 
We must correct this error, when we read the 
Bible. Soundness in the faith does not mean 
orthodoxy, but a healthiness of the soul in its 
acceptance of the pure truth of God. The 
subjective side of the phrase receives the 
greater emphasis. 

This healthiness in faith, as subjective, is a 



THE GENEKAL VIEW. 9 

personal matter. It cannot be affirmed of an 
aggregate, a community, without regard to 
the individuals composing the community. If 
the faith were in externals, it might be so 
affirmed. Bites, ceremonies, and emblazoned 
formularies would satisfy all the conditions. 
A church composed of devils might in this 
way be sound in the faith. But a healthy 
church is that which consists of healthy Chris- 
tians. 

What, then, is a healthy Christian? That 
is the important question which we shall at- 
tempt to answer in the following pages. The 
very word suggests a comparison of soul with 
body, and in pursuing this comparison we 
may, perhaps, best reach our end. 

The most natural inference which w r e draw 
from the word and its use by the apostle is 
that there are sickly Christians. Christ, the 
great Physician, came to give health to these 
souls, but somehow they have not received 
the boon in its fulness. The remedies have 
been sufficient, and the Physician has been 
infinitely skilful. The fault, therefore, must 
he in the patients. Either they have not 



10 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

conformed to the prescriptions, or they have 
counteracted their effect by inconsistent addi- 
tions, or they have permitted evil influences 
to act upon them, and thus thwarted the suffi- 
cient help afforded them. 

The inference from the apostle's words is 
fully sustained by observation. Nothing can 
be more apparent than the difference between 
the New Testament Christian and the aver- 
age Christian of to-clay. If we draw a por- 
trait of a Christian from the descriptions fur- 
nished us in Scripture, we have a man sepa- 
rated from the world, abjuring its habits of 
life, its aims and ambitions, its maxims and 
methods, its pomps and pleasures, and sepa- 
rated unto Christ ; finding joy unspeakable in 
communion with Him, serving Him in His 
cause of grace, using opportunities and means 
to do good after His pattern, making all his 
alliances and intimacies with Christ's people, 
and living in the happy expectation of a home 
with God. But if we draw the portrait of 
the average Christian, we have a man w T ho 
makes his partnerships and close relationships 
with a Christless world, assumes the world's 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 11 

style of living, engages his attention and time 
in the plans and purposes of this short life, 
avoids any separating token from the world 
lest he mar his worldly prospects, never speaks 
of Christ - except by a violent effort, is seen in 
questionable transactions, brings up his fam- 
ily for earthly prizes, and dreads death and 
eternity. These outward differences, that are 
noticeable at a glance, could be paralleled by . 
the differences in spiritual feeling and princi- 
ple. In the one case are profound meditation 
on God's revealed truth, a handling of the 
precious promises, a cheerful study of God's 
daily providence, a constant inhaling of heav- 
enly grace as of the odors of sweet flowers 
all along the road, and the joyous feeling of 
growing strength in the way of Christ; while 
on the other are cares of property and prefer- 
ment, envies and jealousies towards the more 
successful, conscience-struggles against the 
calls of God, grief or vexation at earthly dis- 
appointments, and a general dissatisfaction 
and restlessness. 

The average Christian thus described, is 
sickly. By hypothesis he is a Christian, but 



12 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

he Las just enough life in his soul not to be 
entirely dead. His spiritual life corresponds 
to the physical life of a man in a fever, and 
with ulcers breaking forth upon his flesh, 
racked with cough, tormented with headache, 
or lost, perhaps, in stupor. He lives, but what 
a life! 

It is a melancholy and alarming fact that 
vast numbers of Christians are of this type, 
bringing reproach on the name they bear, and 
counteracting the blessed invitations of the 
gospel by the sad specimens of Christianity 
they exhibit in themselves. 

The conviction forces itself upon us that 
the scars of these inconsistencies must remain 
on the soul for ever. Heaven is not a dead 
level. Grades mark differences of character 
there, and the elements of that' gradation we 
may not anticipate. In mysterious consonance 
with heaven's happiness must be the different 
positions of those who have persisted even to 
the last in frittering away the gifts of grace 
by shameful dallying with a false world. "We 
cannot but believe that the Nethinim fore- 
shadowed a class in heaven. Surely there 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 13 

are some Gibeonitish Christians who will be 
hewers of wood and drawers of water in the 
Promised Land. It will not do for these sickly 
Christians to say that when death comes, it will 
be all the same. It will not be all the same. 
The consequences of their worldliness will go 
with them to all eternity. How that will be is 
not for us to say, but the Scripture is very 
plain that a wilful neglect of Christian privi- 
leges meets its appropriate reward. "We will 
not endeavor to interpret the following words 
of our Lord, but they mean something : " That 
servant, which knew his Lord's will and pre- 
pared not himself, neither did according to 
his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." 

This subject is one of the most important 
that can appeal to a Christian's mind. It is 
the question of his own relation to the Lord 
Jesus and his work of grace. It is the question 
of growth and evangelization. It is the ques- 
tion of personal truth and righteousness. One 
grand reason why the whole world is not now 
the Lord's by faith is the personal worldliness 
of Christians. Not one Christian in ten testifies 
as he should for his Master; not one in a 



11 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

thousand is a "burning and shining light." 
The whole church, which ought to be electric 
at every point, each member surcharged from 
the Holy Spirit, has a feeble, fragmentary 
efficiency, and shows the activity of a rheumatic 
patient w r ho has a few fingers free. The 
revival of the church is the first question before 
Christians to-day. Let the joy of Christ's 
salvation be understood by the church, and 
then she may teach transgressors God's ways, 
and behold sinners converted to the truth in 
Jesus. It is Christians that need conversion, 
just as poor Peter did ; and the longer they 
defer it, the harder a road will they make it. 
Oh, what a sight this is for the angels ! the 
Lord Christ is crying out his heavenly wares, 
and his own people will not buy them, though 
an open treasury is theirs to use, given them 
for this end. 

That we may minister to the sick church, 
let us examine what a healthy Christianity is. 
Two great systems of efficiency are found in 
the human body, the blood-system and the 
nerve-system. The heart is the reservoir of 
the former and the brain of the latter. Through 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 15 

the blood tlie food is assimilated to the body, 
and thus the body is constantly preserved and 
maintains its integrity. The food supplies the 
blood, and the air we inhale is a constant 
purifier of the blood so supplied. On this 
blood-system depends all else in the body, so 
that the Scripture statement has a literal 
force : " The life of the flesh is in the blood." 
Lev. 17 : 11. By a marvellous network of 
a:teries, capillaries and veins the blood is 
circulated through every portion of the human 
frame, and is perpetually engaged in its work 
of repairing the body's waste and fostering its 
growth. If the blood lose in quantity or 
quality, or if the circulation be impeded, the 
body at once fails, weakness and disease 
invade it, and the life is so far marred. Hence 
the main effort of the physician is to restore 
the efficiency of the blood, and when this is 
established, the "vis medicina naturae" — 
nature's restorative energy — accomplishes the 
cure. The poison of the viper does not affect 
the body until it is taken into the blood, and 
conversely the purification of the blood is the 
healing of the man. 



16 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

Now if we regard the spiritual man, we find 
an analogue to the blood-system of the body 
in Christ himself. Christ is our life, just as in 
the body "the life is in the blood." It is as 
Christ permeates the soul in its every depart- 
ment and function that the Christian meets 
the requirements of his new nature. His 
personal contact with the soul builds it up and 
prevents its decay, supplying its ever-recurring 
wants. He is "made unto us wisdom and 
righteousness and sanctification," as well as 
redemption; just as, in the body, bone and 
sinew and cartilage are derived from the 
blood, the whole man being built up from this 
source. There is no part of the spiritual' man 
for which Christ is not the sufficient supply. 
What are called the graces of the Spirit are 
but the applications of Christ. The reason of 
their name "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22 
and Eph. 5 : 9,) we shall consider hereafter. 
"W hat is our spiritual joy but the result of the 
consciousness of Christ's saving presence ? 
"What is our spiritual patience but the rest 
and contentment which spring from the same 
source ? What is our Christian love but the 



THE GENEKAL VIEW. 17 

touch of Christ's love reacting in us ? See in 
what a comprehensive way the cross of death 
furnished us with life ! Understand how Christ 
is "all and in all!" Behold how without 
Christ spiritual life is impossible ! A soul 
without Christ is as a body without blood. It 
is a dead soul, however you may give it the 
semblance of life by art. The Christless soul 
is as truly destitute of spiritual life as the 
beast is destitute of rational life, and the vege- 
table is destitute of animal life. The vegetable 
lives, but it lives on a lower plane than the 
beast ; the beast lives, but it lives on a lower 
plane than the man; the man lives, but he 
lives on a lower plane than the saint. So 
when we say that a soul not sainted by Christ's 
presence is dead, we do not say it has no kind 
of life, but that it has no spiritual life— no 
particle of that highest life for which God 
designed it. In this true and sublime view, it 
is dead. The spiritual life consists in Christ 
everywhere active in the soul, as the blood is 
in the body. Of course this cannot be a 
Christ speculative, or a Christ sentimental. Nei- 
ther speculation nor sentiment is a spring of 

Healthy Christian. 2 



18 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

life. Nor can it be a human Christ, who shall 
cause a divine life in the soul. It is not an 
exemplary Christ or a sympathizing Christ, but 
an indwelling, energizing Christ, who must 
form the very blood of the soul, his example 
and his sympathy being real but secondary to 
his essential union with us. It is in this way 
the Christian says, "1 live, and yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me." Gal. 2 : 20. So we can 
understand the wonderful words of the prayer 
of Jesus, "As thou, Father, art in me and I 
in thee, that they also may be one in us." "I 
in them and thou in me." "That the love 
wherewith thou hast loved me may be in 
them and I in them." John 17:21, 23, 26. 
"What is it that fills the Christian heart with 
peace and causes it to rejoice in the fulness 
of a heavenly hope ? Is it its holiness ? Is it 
the reoord of the earth-life ? Is it even God's 
mercy and love ? Is not " Christ in us the 
hope of glory" ? Is not Christ dwelling in the 
soul and moving it in its life, as the blood 
dwells and moves in the veins, the cause and 
pledge of our glory, the true basis of our joy 
and hope ? 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 19 

It is this which separates true Christianity 
from all religions of mere creed and law, as 
far as the heaven is separated from the earth. 
The Christian, to whom duty is the idea of 
religion, has not begun to understand the 
principle of his spiritual life. Duty has no 
part in the Christian scheme except as it pro- 
ceeds from the Christ-life of the soul. In any 
other light it is self -righteousness and heathen- 
ism. Hence the cry of God to the soul is not 
" Do," but " Believe ;" and this leads to another 
branch of thought. 

The blood is formed in the body from the 
food eaten. So Christ is formed in us from 
the Holy word accepted by faith. Faith is 
thus the mouth of the soul, in accordance with 
that exhortation of the Lord, " Open thy mouth 
wide and I will fill it." Ps. 81:10. We 
receive Jesus through the word. He that 
feeds on God's word has Christ formed in him. 
The written word introduces the personal 
Word. And as the body cannot eat once for 
all, but must eat daily, so God's word must be 
daily used in order that the Christ-life be sus- 
tained in our souls. The disuse of the word 



20 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

is a starvation process for the Christian. The 
first Psalm describes the blessed man as one 
meditating day and night in God's revealed 
truth ; and the 119th Psalm is a varied reite- 
ration of the paramount importance of a 
constant feasting upon the same holy word. 
It is by reason of the waste and losses of the 
body that the blood must be ever renewed by 
food, and it is by reason of the waste of the 
soul, its frailty and weakness through sin, that 
Christ must be ever supplied anew to it by the 
aliment of the word. From these considera- 
tions we may see the relation of the Bible to 
the Christian. It is a vital relation. His 
intelligence is in question only in a subordinate 
way. His heart, his life, his inner being of 
will and motive and affection are directly inter- 
ested. The intellectual elements of the Bible 
are only valuable as, by enlightening the mind, 
they open the heart. The Bible is life-giving 
only as Christ is in it, and the reading of the 
Bible is life-receiving only as Christ is ac- 
cepted in it. It is faith that alone makes this 
appropriation. It is the trust of a child 
listening to its father's voice, and by a natural 



THE GENERAL VIEW. 21 

instinct storing its treasures of truth in the 
chambers of the soul. It is a process of the 
tenclerest and truest affections. The soul has 
passed beyond the region of doubts and criti- 
cism when it has thus learned to feed on the 
word. It has tasted the heavenly manna and 
knows its freshness and sweetness. 

A dark thought has to be inserted here. It 
is possible for the Christian, by yielding to 
worldly influences, to lose his relish for this 
celestial food. " Our soul loatheth this light 
bread " was said of provision from God's own 
table. There is no better test of a healthy 
piety than an appetite for the Bible. It shows 
the soul's fondness for Christ and its longing 
to sustain the constant experience of Christ 
within. It shows that it knows the way to do 
this, and makes a habit of its privilege. The 
Bible study of faith is the making blood for 
the soul, the supply of Christ's efficiency to 
the spiritual life. 





CHAPTEE II. 

THE GENERAL VIEW — OTHER 
MEANS OF LIFE. 

'ONSIDEB next some other fea- 
tures in the analogy between 
physical and spiritual life. 
In the body the blood is kept pure 
by the respiratory organs, supplying 
fresh oxygen with every breath. Without this 
the avenues of life would be clogged and the 
food would prove a minister of evil and death. 
Now it is remarkable how constantly the 
teachings of Christ and his apostles urge Chris- 
tians to association. They are not to forsake 
the assembling of themselves together; the 
very name of church (kKiduioia) denotes an 
assembly. A special blessing is given to the 
gathering together of Christians to pray ; they 
are to meet together on the first day of the 
week ; they are spoken of as a company; they 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 23 

are to refresh and comfort one another ; in 
short, the whole New Testament views the 
Church of Christ as a band of brethren gath- 
ered together and separated from the world. 
This Christian communion acts to the indi- 
vidual Christian as the fresh air acts upon the 
body. It is by this that the faith of the soul 
is preserved from becoming false or fantastic, 
and the graces are maintained in truth. 

Isolation begets selfishness, and selfishness 
is the bane of faith. The truth of God in us 
needs a perpetual contact with that truth in 
others in order to preserve its purity. The 
plant shut out from light and air withers or 
has a sickly growth ; and the Christianity that 
foregoes the communion of the saints loses its 
tone and is a prey to spiritual fungi. We 
cannot find high types of Christian life either 
in the hermit's cell or in the haunts of fashion. 
The Christianity found in either lacks oxygen. 
It has not breathed a healthy atmosphere. 
Asphyxia is threatened in each case : in the 
one case by breathing, or trying to breathe, in 
a vacuum, and in the other by breathing in an 
impure air. The same divine physician who 



24 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

has prescribed for us the food of the word, 
has also prescribed a Christian communion as 
a regulator of that word's effects in the heart. 
The blood is indebted not only to the food 
but to the air we breathe ; and our possession 
of Christ in us is dependent not only on the 
truth we accept, but on the company we keep. 
A clear conviction and childlike faith, with the 
elasticity and vigorous glow belonging to them, 
may be followed by a sad experience of doubts 
and fears, of sloth and stupidity, of wayward- 
ness and wandering, all by reason of the false 
associations permitted by the converted heart. 
The sources of truth are kept open to the soul, 
but they are counteracted in their efficacy by 
the constraints of evil associations. "I read 
my Bible and I pray," say many, "but I 
obtain no relief." The trouble is not in 
the food, but the air. The social intimacies of 
the world nullify all that the Bible and prayer 
might do. No food will keep a man healthy 
in a fetid cellar or amid the fumes of a match- 
factory. The cry to a believer should be as 
much " Look to your lungs " as "Look to your 
stomach." Cultivate a Christian society, as 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 25 

well as study prayerfully God's word, if you 
would have Christ in you as the blood of your 
soul in a pure and unimpeded current. 

But there is still another important consid- 
eration. We are wont, and rightly, to couple 
exercise with air, when we prescribe for debiii-, 
tated bodies. We know the breathing itself is 
performed better when the body is properly 
excited by motion ; that the lungs play to their 
full extent, and every corner of their functionary 
surface is brought into use. We know, too, 
that by exercise, desirable mechanical as well 
as chemical changes are superinduced in the 
system, the body throwing off its incumbrances, 
while its tissues are strengthened by a more 
equal distribution of its humors. So the soul 
needs its exercise. It must put forth its activ- 
ities in its social opportunities. The social 
benefits will be rightly received and their 
virtues enhanced by this. A Christian must 
not be a passive recipient among his fellows, 
but he must improve his recipiency by activity. 
It is as we exercise our graces that they grow. 
Christian society furnishes us with a pure air 
to breathe, but we must be stirring amid it, if 



26 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

we would gain all its advantages in ourselves. 
We must drink it into the lungs of our spiritual 
man' by clieery exercise. Christian work ought 
to be no more irksome than the activity of a 
healthy body on a crisp autumn morning. By 
Christian work we mean any use of the graces 
God has given us. The sympathies, the 
encouragements, the helps, the instructions, 
which we may bestow on others ; the self- 
restraint, the love, the patience, the forbear- 
ance, which we may cultivate in ourselves ; 
the faith, obedience, hope, and filial affection, 
which we may foster toward God — all classify 
themselves under the head of Christian work, 
that active exercise by which we make the 
most of Christian society, and render it fully 
the accompaniment of the spiritual food which 
the word furnishes to the soul. 

This sketch of the soul's blood-system may 
suffice for our purpose. A few words respect- 
ing the soul's nerve-system follow. The nerves 
of the body give sensation to every part, and 
thus arouse responsive action to every touch 
from without. They are, besides, the con- 
necting link between body and mind, running 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 27 

in this way into a region where we cannot 
trace them. A peculiar mystery belongs to 
them in this their relation to the higher being. 
In both these relations the nerves are the 
watchful superintendents of the whole frame. 
The blood-system could not exist a moment 
without the nerve-system. It would forget to 
perform its functions if the nerves did not ever 
give their ready signals. It is through the 
nerves, too, the senses act. Sight and hearing, 
smelling and taste would nofbe, but for nerves 
which make them possible and efficient. 

All our discriminations in the material world 
are made through the nerves. We know the 
difference between the sweet odor of the rose 
and the foul fumes of mephitic vapor — between 
the fair, sunny landscape, with stream and 
mountain, and the dingy aspect of a smoky 
factory-town in a rain-storm ; between the 
delicious flavor of a peach and the bitter taste 
of wormwood — only by the action of our nerves. 

Now, if we turn to the spiritual man, we find 
an element of the spiritual life which exactly 
answers to the nerve-system. It watches over 
the whole life. It makes it sensitive to the 



28 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

impact of the spiritual world without ; it sug- 
gests the soul's responsive activity ; it connects 
the soul with the mysterious infinite by bonds 
that transcend description and definition, and 
it gives the spiritual man his powers of dis- 
cernment between good and evil. This is the 
Spirit of God in the conscience and conscious- 
ness ; (the Greeks had one word, cweidrjoig, for 
both.) The Spirit of God is resident in the 
believer ; hence he is called the temple of the 
Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. 6-19 ; 2 Cor. 6-16. It is 
from this source come the spiritual perceptions 
and discriminations of the regenerated soul. 
Look at Paul's remarkable language : " God 
hath revealed [these mysteries] unto us by 
his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, 
yea, the deep things of God. For what man 
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit 
of man which is in him ? Even so the things 
of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of 
God. Now we have received, not the spirit of 
the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that 
we might know the things which are freely 

given us of God But the natural 

man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 29 

God, for they are foolishness unto him ; neither 
can he know them, because they are spiritually 
discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth 
all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, 
that he may instruct him ? But we have the 
mind of Christ." 1 Cor. 2:10-16. This 
indwelling of God the Spirit in the believer's 
soul is too often explained away as figurative, 
because incomprehensible. The presence of 
our own souls within our bodies is incompre- 
hensible ; how can w r e expect to comprehend 
the indwelling of the Divine Spirit? But the 
incomprehensible is true and demands our 
faith, and the recognition of God within us 
is the grandest secret of Christian growth. 
"Know ye not your own selves," says the 
Apostle, "how that Jesus Christ is in you?" 
2 Cor. 13 : 5. And so the Spirit is affirmed to 
dwell equally within us. "If any man have 
not the Spirit of Christ," (called the Spirit of 
God immediately before,) "he is none of 
His ; and if Christ be in you, the body is dead 
because of sin, but the spirit is life because of 
righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that 



30 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, 
lie that raised up Christ from the dead shall 
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit 
that dwelleth in you." Rom. 8 : 9-11. Here the 
Spirit is called both the Spirit of God and the 
Spirit of Christ, and has a veritable indwelling 
in the human body and soul as the soul's true 
life, and yet is distinct from Christ dwelling 
in us. "We may talk of it as an influence 
or an emotion or a tendency ; but it is more 
than those. It is one who can bear witness 
with our spirit, (ver. 16,) help our infirmities 
and make intercession for us, (ver. 26,) and 
that is what an influence or emotion or ten- 
dency could not do. No ! let us meet the 
stupendous fact fully. It is truly God in us. 
As we have said, the Holy Spirit in us is the 
nerve-system of the spiritual life. It is he 
who watches and witnesses within us, and by 
his holy influences keeps the truth in us pure 
and energetic. It is he who who gives that 
wisdom of perception by which the Christian 
soul knows the truth from a lie, and almost 
instinctively separates the good from the evil. 
It is he who checks and corrects, warns and 



OTHEH MEANS OF LIFE. 31 

exhorts, encourages and soothes the soul in its 
various exercises and experiences. Christ is 
in us as the source of growth and the main- 
tainer of life, and the Holy Ghost is* in us as 
the communicator of the life-principle, the 
furnisher of spiritual sensation and its discrimi- 
nating power. In point of time there is no 
priority in the reception of Christ and the 
Holy Spirit by the soul, but in logic there is. 
It is the Holy Spirit who regenerates, who 
quickens the dead soul to a new T birth, and 
thus enables it to accept Christ and all his 
efficiency. Born of the Spirit, the new-born 
soul feeds on the sincere milk of the word and 
thus Christ is developed within. The whole 
is one wx>rk of God with the soul, but our 
finite minds are obliged to analyze and look 
at it in parts. 

The nerve- system of the body is preserved 
in health by the same means which preserve 
the blood-system. If the blood is kept pure 
and vigorous, the nerves, like the sinews and the 
muscles, will be kept in healthy exercise. So 
in the Christian soul, it is Christ in us, in his 
truth and fulness, through a constant com- 



32 THE HEALTHY CHBISTIAN. 

munion with the word and with Christ's own 
redeemed ones, that will ever preserve our 
conscience from numbness and our judgment 
from elisor. So our active conscience and 
correct judgment will react upon us in making 
Christ more clear and satisfactory to the soul 
The two systems act and react upon one 
another. There is blood in the brain and 
there are nerves in the heart. No human 
mind can draw the line between the work of 
Jesus and the work of the Spirit in the con- 
verted soul. The interlacings and implications 
of both among motives, perceptions, affections 
and will are a mystery and must be a mystery. 
But we may make the general analysis, that 
we have made, in considering Jesus Christ as 
forming the life-blood of the soul and the 
Holy Spirit as forming the nerve-power of the 
same, in its new condition as begotten of God 
and endowed with a new nature. We may, in 
general, place Christ in the region of the 
affections and will, and the Holy Spirit in the 
region of the conscience and judgment, and 
yet we know well that this is but a crude 
approximation to the truth. 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 33 

A sound faith, (or a healthy faith) is, then, a 
free and regular action of these divine elements 
in us, a " fulness of God," in accordance with 
that prayer of Paul regarding the Ephesians : 
"that he would grant you, according to the 
riches of his glory, to be strengthened with 
might by his Spirit in the inner man, that 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith 

that ye might be filled with all the 

fulness of God." A sound faith is a faith 
which makes Christ, the life of the soul, to be 
felt in every fibre of our being, giving a glow 
to all and conforming all to itself ; and in 
which the Holy Spirit is ever the inspirer and 
guide of this soul-life. A sound faith is thus 
eminently a divine thing. It has no earthly 
contents or earthly support. It anticipates 
the heavenly citizenship and lives here an 
exotic, a stranger and foreigner. It is no 
product of philosophies or societies or poetry. 
Nor can it be gauged by men's natural judg- 
ments, however refined and educated they 
may be. Men (unconverted and unregenerate 
men) cannot, therefore, prescribe for a faith, 
that it may become sound. They are con- 

Healthy Christian. 3 



34 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

stantly attempting it, but none of their 
nostrums ever reach the seat of the disease. 
Nor can men without effort expect to gain a 
sound or healthy faith. " Giving all diligence " 
is the apostolic precept. (2 Pet. 1 : 5.) Unless 
watched and nurtured, the soul's health decays. 
Everything around us tends to injure the 
plants of grace. Just as a diligent study of 
God's word and a diligent companionship with 
sincere Christians are necessary to the purity 
and fulness of the Christ-life within, so. a 
diligent prayer-communion with God is the 
essential condition of the spirit-life in us. 
There is an analogy here with the % nerve-life 
of the body and its mysterious connections 
with magnetism, electricity, and other impon- 
derable agents. Prayer takes this mysterious 
and powerful place in the soul's life, and 
diligence in prayer must accompany diligence 
in the word and Christian intercourse if we 
would have the whole spiritual man healthy 
and strong. Christ and the Holy Ghost are 
both indwellers of the believer ; the entire 
spiritual life is in their presence and work. 
The word and communion with the saints 



OTHER MEANS OF LIFE. 35 

nourish the Christ -experience, while prayer 
nourishes the Spirit-experience, and yet both 
are really one. As we have before seen, the 
two streams are for ever intermingling. One 
cannot take this Bible view of salvation and 
renewal without seeing that no natural growth 
could ever develop a Christian or a saint. 
There must be a new birth or a new begetting 
of God. And not only must the unconverted 
soul be made to realize this foundation fact, 
but the believer must ever renew its freshness 
in him, so that he may be saved sad legalistic 
and self-righteous mistakes in attempting to 
increase in holiness. Your growth, my Chris- 
tian brother, is from within, not from without. 
It is only through God in you that you can 
grow. There is the root and sap of your 
spiritual life. Law T s and rules and churches 
and ordinances have nothing to do with it, 
except as they are the products of it. A due 
thought of this will send you for a renewal of 
soundness and health, not to any form of 
external duty, but to your Bible and your 
knees. You will keep your heart with all 
diligence, as appreciating the truth that out of 



36 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

it are the issues of life. You will be jealous 
over it with a godly jealousy, and remember 
that it belongs to God. You will be to the 
world — that distinctive thing which belongs 
only to Satan — as one dead, and your life will 
be hid with Christ in God. 

If you were sound in faith, healthy in your 
piety, what an impassable gulf would lie 
between you and the Christless world! for 
God dwelleth in you ! 





CHAPTER III. 



THE SOUL'S FOOD, 




»• Thy law do J love." Ps. 119 : 163. 

N the former chapters we have 
followed the analogy of the bodily 
life and spiritual life as suggested by 
Scripture, and have noted that as the 
blood-system and nerve-system mutu- 
ally sustain one another, and the two form the 
sources of physical life, so the Lord Jesus 
Christ and the Holy Spirit in mysterious con- 
junction form the life eternal of the soul ; and 
we have also noted that as the blood and 
nerve-fluid are furnished to the body through 
the food, so the indwelling of Christ and the 
Spirit is through the word of God ; and, more- 
over, that as the blood and nerve-fluid thus 



38 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

originating are maintained in purity by means 
of the breath, exercise, and nervous influences, 
so the indwelling of Christ and the Spirit is 
made efficient by Christian communion, activ- 
ity, and prayer. We have thus all the data 
from which to examine in detail the conditions 
of a healthy piety. 

1. Our first consideration will concern the 
relation of the Christian to the icritten ivord of 
God. I use the word "written" advisedly, for 
to some minds it may appear arbitrary to 
bind a man's salvation to a book, which might 
be lost or put out of reach or become cor- 
rupted. Indeed, this is a very favorite objection 
to Christianity on the part of a large class of 
philosophers. They plead against it its injus- 
tice and partiality, as it makes salvation easier 
to some than to others ; perhaps, indeed, 
impossible to many. No doubt there are sin- 
cere minds that struggle with this perplexity, 
and are inclined to feel that a revelation that 
is to all alike is the only revelation which they 
can accept, and that hence a written revelation 
they must reject. There is an apparent force 
in this argument, but yet a few moments' 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 39 

thought will destroy it ; for, in the first place, 
a revelation comes with its own proofs. Hay- 
ing thus proved itself, no outside considerations 
can invalidate it. Christianity is a revelation 
proved by its own inherent perfections and by 
the overwhelming evidences of the miraculous 
w r orks attending its proclamation. From Gen- 
esis to Revelation, from Adam to John, its 
light shines in unmixed brilliancy, (for it is 
alike Christianity before and after the earthly 
life of Christ.) The divinity of the record is 
as clear to the unprejudiced mind as the celes- 
tial origin of the midday sun. God's grace 
raising man from sin to holiness through the 
sufferings of the God-man is a doctrine of 
grandeur and perfection that no human mind 
could ever have conceived ; and all the accord- 
ant teachings of purity in the heart, love to 
God and man and renunciation of self, are 
both incomprehensible and repugnant to the 
natural man. Besides this heavenly aspect 
of the word, we have the external wonders 
wrought in its confirmation by Moses, Elijah 
and Elisha, and Christ and his apostles, done 
in no corner, but performed openly before 



40 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

nations, and deeply and permanently inscribed 
on the common memories and traditions of 
the race, as well as minutely recorded on the 
sacred pages. These testimonies do not wax 
weak through age, as some would falsely and 
craftily argue. Is a father's testimony to his 
early home any the less strong because the 
child has never seen that home, and never 
saw his father's childhood? "When that child 
is himself a grandfather, is his testimony to 
his father's home any weaker to Ms grand- 
children ? It is a false formula that evidence 
grows weak by age. The character of the 
bearers, and not the time through which they 
bear it, can alone invalidate evidence. The 
miracles of Jesus and his apostles are just as 
potent testimonies to-day as they were when 
they were performed. Nobody can impeach 
the witnesses. The fulness of historic light 
shines on them, and they stand out as con- 
spicuously as the Alps in the sunshine. False 
miracles and fabulous legends cannot bear 
investigation, but the miracles of Christ and 
the apostles court and rejoice in the most 
searching scrutiny. The more you compare 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 41 

the diamond and its imitation, the better for 
the diamond. He is a fool who, because of 
the imitation, flings all away and denies the 
diamond. 

The written revelation coming thus to us 
with its attendant testimony within and with- 
out, it is the part of common sense to meet 
theoretical objections with contempt. When 
once a truth is established, we can occupy it 
as an impregnable fortress. This is the course 
of every right mind with the Scriptures. Hav- 
ing received their own abundant testimony, it 
consents to leave outside problems unsolved 
rather than stultify itself by denying the true 
Scripture for their solution. 

But, secondly, the difficulty about the injus- 
tice of a written revelation may itself not 
appear so great, if we remember that the writ- 
ten word does not deny the spoken word, but 
is its preservation. The spoken word to Adam 
and Noah w r as to the whole race, and it is not 
for us to say how much of that spoken word 
has remained in tradition or thought or mental 
structure in the various nations of the earth. 
But to us the written word is the word, and 



42 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

hence we emphasize the adjective, and protest 
against any naturalism that would make all 
alike by destroying the Bible. "God in na- 
ture" is a favorite expression with souls that 
hate to think of sin and punishment, of peni- 
tence and pardon, of grace and gratitude. But 
"God in nature" is no comfort or help to the 
helpless spirit. The whirlwind, the earth- 
quake, the storm, the overwhelming waves, the 
monsters of the sea and forest, the volcanic 
fires, the consuming thunderbolt, the desolating 
pestilence, the tortures of disease — these are 
some of the sweet comforts to the needy and 
sinking soul that "God in nature" presents. 
"What right has the natural religionist to call 
out from nature some of its fair scenes and 
construct a revelation and a creed from this 
fragmentary eclecticism ? If God is in nature 
as our instructor, he is instructor in all nature 
and not in part. If God's revelation to the 
help-seeking soul is Ihrough the workings of 
the physical system — the material creation — 
then common sense protests against any elimi- 
nation in the record. If the naturalist point 
to the flower and the bird-song, to the winding 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 43 

brook and the frisking lamb, and exclaim as 
commentary on this text, "God is love — God 
is my Father," I have a right to point to the 
drought and the famine, to the deadly cobra's 
fang and the poisonous breath of the cholera, 
and exclaim as commentary on this text, " God 
is angry — God is my enemy." I defy any one 
to find a flaw in my reasoning. We have had 
so much of this sentimental naturalism, that it 
has obtained a circulation as of true coin, and 
sensible people are caught by its sophistries. 
Some of the blessed truths of God's word are 
attributed to nature as their author, when 
nature's voice is as dumb as the grave on 
these sublime themes ; and then when nature 
is arrayed in these jewels from God's word, 
that word is rejected and cast out as a pre- 
tender. What does nature teach at the grave 
but corruption ? What does she teach in sick- 
ness but decay ? What does she teach in 
sorrow but despair ? And this nature is the 
comforter, poor soul, to which you would flee 
in the day of your calamity ! 

It is something above and against nature 
that we need; something that shall say, "Thus 



44 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

far and no farther shalt tliou go, and here 
shall thy proud waves be stayed ;" something 
that shall rebuke the fever and the pain, as 
well as the winds and the w r aves; something 
that shall go deeper than pain and sorrow, to 
sin, the cause of all, and there apply a balm ; 
something that shall give a triumph to the 
spirit in the face of conscience and the truth, 
and shall fill the heart with holy boldness. 
Before these requirements how nature shrinks 
away! "The depth saith, 'It is not in me/ 
and the sea saith, 'It is not in me.' " In the 
midst of nature's fairest garden we must look 
for the Kol Jehovah, the voice of the Lord 
God, as something very different from the 
trees, and w T hich alone can touch the centre 
of our moral being and guide our feet in truth. 
That Kol Jehovah has never been wanting 
since sin rendered man helpless ; and whatever 
speculation we may have regarding its char- 
acter and method amid the wilds of barbarism 
or the refinements of elegant paganism, the 
practical fact for us is its presence with us in 
the Bible. 

The ready suggestion of superficial skeptics, 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 45 

that others have their Bibles as good as ours, 
and that it is vain for us to ignore the holy 
books of India, Persia, China and Arabia, is a 
suggestion quite like that of the naturalist for 
both its plausibility and its weakness. It is a 
very captivating liberality, apparently, that 
appeals to a young heart, and on the score of 
common justice bids it honor Vedas, Koran, 
and Bible alike. The same excellent liberality 
would have us honor Gaudama, Mohammed, 
and Jesus Christ alike ; and a perfectly analo- 
gous and comprehensive liberality would call 
for an equal homage toward God and the 
Devil. "Good Lord, good Devil," would be 
the appropriate exordium to every prayer. It 
is no compliment to truth to spread its gar- 
ments over error. It is no compliment to 
truth to represent her as looking any way and 
all ways. It is no compliment to truth to say 
" 2 and 2 make 4 or 5 or 6, just as you please. 
We must be liberal and let each be true." If 
this be liberality, I know of no place so free 
as hell, where consistency is not a qualification 
for admission. If the Vedas are true, then 
the Koran and the Bible are lies ; if the Koran 



46 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

is true, then the Vedas and the Bible are lies ; 
and if the Bible is true, the Yedas and the 
Koran are lies. A pagan who honors the 
Vedas, or a Mohammedan who honors the 
Koran, is far more of a man than the so-called 
Christian, who pretends to honor Vedas, Koran, 
and Bible all alike. They are false, but he is 
both false and shallow. One reading of the 
Vedas or Koran will stop any sane man from 
comparing the Bible with them ; and the Per- 
sian and Chinese books may be treated in the 
same way. Let me see the man who has read 
both and is in doubt which is the true, they 
or the Bible, and I '11 show you a man who 
has seen the sun and a tallow-candle light, and 
cannot for the life of him tell which is the 
perennial luminary. It is a reproach to 
humanity that such rubbish ever has to be 
cleared away before discussing the wonders of 
the Book of God. But the devil is never weary 
of putting the fool's cap on men. 

The Kol Jehovah, the voice of the Lord God, 
is to us only in the Book of God. There are 
promptings and guidings in Providence and 
spiritual influences, but the voice, the articu- 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 47 

lated words and sentences that form tlie vehicle 
of organic truth — this divine defining utter- 
ance is found only in the Bible. The 119th 
Psalm, in the very centre of the Bible, is an 
enlargement on this great truth. In that 
psalm the psalmist uses seven different words 
to express the icritten revelation of God. He 
seems purposely to shut out any twisting of 
his words into a praise of " sermons in stones 
and books in the running brooks," and to con- 
fine the mind to the contemplation of that 
specific revelation which to-day we call, with 
its divine increase, the Bible. "We cannot con- 
ceive of any other way in which God could 
have made his voice heard by the mass of 
mankind than by a written word. A literal 
voice, an appeal to the ear, would have reached 
the treatment of a natural phenomenon very 
shortly. It would have been put away from 
the conscience and soul with volcanoes and 
earthquakes ; criticism would have erected its 
batteries, and thrown the shell of fixed law 
and subjective imagination into the whole sys- 
tem, or else the ear, accustomed to the sound, 
would have given it no heed. Moreover, the 



48 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

literal voice could not be examined, analyzed, 
and weighed, as can the written word and its 
potent evidences thus accumulated. It would 
have had to become a written word in order 
to dwell upon earth and be thoroughly known. 
And once a written w r ord among men, there is 
a dishonoring of that word and a ruinous in- 
dulgence of man's sloth and neglect if a voice 
should be added to the revelation. 

The written word is thus the light of our 
path. It is the perpetuation of heavenly truth, 
a candle lighted from the throne of God, 
which can never be extinguished. In its rela- 
tion to the Christian, or the Christian's relation 
to it, 

It should be the " man of his counsel" 

This is the Bible phrase. In this very 119th 
Psalm we have the words, "thy testimonies 
are my counsellors," literally, "men of my 
counsel." This phrase of David corresponds 
to the words of Stephen, Paul, and Peter, who 
call the Scriptures the oracles or oracle of 
God. They are the ever-present source of 
instruction to the soul; and, as divine, can 
never fail to meet every want proposed. The 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 49 

fulness of God is found in his word, and this 
word is no more defective in its instruction 
than God is defective in his love and mercy. 
Hence, just as the ship's pilot is always at the 
helm with his eye upon the compass, so the 
healthy believer will be found ever directing 
his course by this unerring guide. This im- 
plies an intimate acquaintance with God's 
word that I am sure is not common. It im- 
plies the meditating in God's law day and 
night, which seems a mere Utopian expression 
to most Christians. But yet who wants a 
counsellor with whom he is not intimate ? And 
how can you get the counsellor's mind unless 
you sit down with him by the hour and ques- 
tion him and lead out his manifold instructions ? 
Is there much of this done by Christians ? I 
put it to the honest opinion of my readers. Is 
God's oracle consulted, is his word pondered, 
is this divine counsellor received into intimate 
communion by the so-called people of God ? 
Are not Christians pleading constantly that 
they have no time to search the Scriptures? 
This is their response to the Master ! But ia 
it not often a fear lest the Scriptures would 



50 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

rebuke much of their daily conduct that keeps 
them away ? They desire not its counsel. The 
"man of their counsel" is not the man whose 
counsel is agreeable. But what can be sub- 
stituted ? Our reason is sadly deficient. God 
is not going to guide us^by dream or magic. 
He has not promised a miracle. The Spirit's 
movement is always through the tvord. With 
the word unconsulted, no man can expect the 
inspiration of the Spirit. " To the law and to 
the testimony" is the cry of God to the soul. 
There and there only are our orders and guar- 
antees. There is a practical necromancy among 
Christians, by which they substitute guesses, 
chances and native cunning for the authority 
and teaching of God's word. They walk by 
the sparks of their own kindling rather than 
seek God's gracious sunlight. The main book 
on the merchant's desk, on the lady's table, in 
the child's school, should be the Bible. It 
would regulate the action of commerce, society, 
and education. It would protect men in trade 
from the temptations to fraud and deceit, as 
w T ell as from over-absorption in material inter- 
ests; it would protect society from immodesty. 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 51 

extravagance, frivolity, and selfishness ; and it 
would save the growing minds of the young 
from the poison of worldliness and practical 
infidelity, which form the staple of so many 
schools. Now, while this is the legitimate 
place and office of God's word as the man of 
our counsel, the average Christian is actually 
startled by the proposition. The Bible among 
ledgers ! The Bible in a drawing-room ! The 
Bible to be read and taught and consulted in 
our fashionable schools ! How absurd ! And 
so with a sneer in place of an argument, God's 
holy word is dismissed from the places where 
above all others it should appear as the "man 
of counsel ;" and you may be sure that the 
hearts that have been ashamed of God's oracle 
in business and society will not be forward to 
consult it in the closet. The Bible is what we 
need to reform both business and society. To 
reinstate God's pure word in our haunts of 
commerce and our social gatherings, as the 
counsellor and thus the controller of all, should 
be the aim of every evangelizing spirit. Let 
the Christian, wherever he goes, be known as 
the Bible-man, the man who keeps this divine 



52 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

light ever before his feet. For God to give 
the light and man to put it away from him is 
to court disaster and defy God. Alas ! how 
many are doing that ! How many are putting 
the divine counsellor into a dungeon (like Jere- 
miah) because he counsels things unpleasant 
to our greed or our low ambition ? 

Let us emancipate the Bible, and place it in 
its high position of immediate and perpetual 
counsellor to the soul, a position to which God 
has assigned it. 





CHAPTEE IV. 




THE SOUL'S FOOD \ LOVE FOR 
GOD'S WORD. 

HE inspired word must be to the 
believer the object of affection. 
Every path that leads to heaven 
is trodden by willing feet. No one 
is, ever driven to Paradise. The very 
essence of a holy life, in its initiation and 
its consummation, is in the renewed will. It 
is a very gross view of heaven that counts 
it a place only, into which a man might be 
cast, whether he will or no. All true reli- 
gion is a willing religion. Now the root of 
the will is in the affections. It is the new 
heart that makes the new life. A man wills 
to follow the truth, because he loves the truth. 
That new affection is the original germ of 



54 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

his godliness. And just as the Christian 
life is a willing life growing out of the affec- 
tions, so every contribution to that life from 
God's grace is to be received into the love 
of the soul, before it can be made efficient. 
The Bible, God's revealed truth, is to be not 
only the soul's food, but the soul's delicious 
food, or else it does not at all adapt itself to 
the whole economy of God's salvation. God 
has no more prepared a bitter food for the 
soul, than he has prepared a painful heaven. 
The love that saves does not delight in tor- 
menting. The unpalatableness of God's wine 
must be in the diseased palate. It is a favor- 
ite notion with some that God delights in 
making his people uncomfortable. They seem 
to think that Christ's sufferings for sin were 
not 'enough, but we must supplement them. 
Hence the way to heaven must be studiously 
beset with thorns in order to be orthodox. 
Reading Scripture as a penance belongs to this 
strange school of self-righteous piety. Under 
this pernicious infatuation, children are made 
to read portions of the Bible as utterly un- 
meaning to them as a page of the Integral 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 55 

Calculus, and so a distaste and disgust for 
the "Word of God is generated in their minds, 
and they grow up with an aversion to the 
Blessed Book as wholly unnecessary as a 
repugnance to their own mother. We must 
go back to first principles. If the means of 
grace are not delightful to us, it is our fault 
and not God's. If we wander away from 
God, he may send afflictions to awaken our 
conviction, but to suppose that he will regu- 
larly deal out to us affliction as our meat and 
drink, that he will give us a nauseous drug as 
our daily food, is insulting to the character 
of our Heavenly Father, and to the finished 
work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet to 
such a conclusion must we come, if we are to 
read the Bible only as a duty, if we are to 
take it up as a last resort, if we are to view it 
as a Komanist views his knotted cord, with 
which at appropriate times he must scourge 
himself. And is not this the prevailing notion 
in the church of Christ? At least, does not 
practice suggest the thought ? 

That the Bible should be disliked and avoid- 
ed by unbelievers, whose unrenewed hearts 



56 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

would be ever rebuked by it, and whose un- 
renewed tastes would have no appreciation 
of its divine beauty, is by no means strange ; 
but that the children of God, born into the 
kingdom of Christ and receiving the Holy 
Ghost, should have no other connection with 
the Word but that which conscience sternly 
compels, is a paradox which might make an- 
gels w T eep. Go through the families you know, 
and see this strange and sad phenomenon. 
In how many Christian families the Bible 
stands no chance with Shakespeare or the 
last novel! Rarely touched on a week-day, 
on Sundays even the biography or religious (?) 
newspaper is preferred to it. Love for the 
Bible! why, it is as rare as love for the 
prayer-meeting, and love for Christian com- 
munion. All these signs of spiritual health 
fail together. The fact of this apathy toward 
God's Word ought to alarm, but habit weaves 
its screen before the mind and it fails to see 
the dangers of its position. It was lately said 
that it would be a good thing to have an auto 
da fe now and then in every Christian com- 
munity. An old-fashioned persecution might 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 57 

arouse the church of Christ and separate it 
from the world. And so a personal disaster 
might almost be sought in order to teach us 
the inestimable preciousness of God's Word. 
There is so much trifling in Christian circles, 
so much flitting hither and thither in chase of 
bubbles, so much superficial piety, so much 
zeal for ribbons, that unless disaster come 
and shake the earthly foundations, it seems 
impossible that deep and grand and heavenly 
thoughts can enter these souls and so the 
blessed Bible become a cherished treasure. 
I have read of a poor blind girl in France 
who obtained the gospel of Mark in raised 
letters, and learned to read it by the ends of 
her fingers. By the peculiar character of her 
daily toil her fingers became callous, and her 
sense of touch diminished till she could not 
distinguish the letters. One day she cut the 
skin from the ends of her fingers to increase 
their sensibility, only, however, to destroy it. 
She felt that she must now give up her be- 
loved book, and weeping, pressed it to her 
lips, saying, "Farewell, farewell, sweet word 
of my Heavenly Father, food for my soul ! I 



58 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

must part with thee!" But to her surprise, 
her lips, more delicate than her fingers, dis- 
cerned the form of the letters. She read 
C4 Gospel according to Mark." Her soul, over- 
flowing with gratitude, pours out thanks be- 
fore the throne of her Father in heaven. All 
night she perused with her lips the holy book, 
and her heart overflowed with joy at the new 
acquisition. 

Oh for such a love for God's word in the 
hearts of God's people ! Shall we wait for 
disasters before we know r our privileges and 
cultivate our true delights? Does it not seem 
sometimes as if we should have to become 
blind, so as not to see the glittering follies 
about us, in order to prize aright our Jesus 
and his Word ? Are we not sometimes assured 
in our reflections that afflictive dispensations 
are a necessity for our promotion, that only 
the sternness of this treatment can transfer 
us to our true position and spiritual relations 
as the children of God ? Nay, is not this the 
philosophy that unlocks the whole mystery 
of affliction-? And to one who understands this 
philosophy may not many a blow be avoided 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 59 

by learning the lesson from those already 
received and flying to the refuge of Christ's 
bosom where peace is found? In urging 
Christians to love the Word, I am really urg- 
ing them to love the Lord more. When they 
are filled with his love, they will love his love- 
letters. When they f 3el that no love-relation 
is so grand and so absorbing as that which 
binds them to the Saviour, they will then feel 
that no words are so sweet as his, no book 
so precious as that which speaks of him and 
speaks from him to the saved soul. And so? 
conversely, if the Bible is not lovingly pon- 
dered, then there is but little force in the love 
for Jesus, the appreciation of his glorious 
presence is dull, the thoughts of his wooing 
and winning work for the soul are benumbed. 
And here let me call attention to a type 
of Christian often found, in which self-decep- 
tion surrounds itself with plausibility. It is 
where the love of Christ is deemed sufficient 
without the Word. The Bible is neglected, 
and the soul comforts itself with knowing that 
it can commune with the Lord without any 
medium. While this is literally true, yet the 



60 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

danger is very great that where the argument 
is used, there is a substitution of nature, or 
vague sentiment, or art-dreams for Christ. If 
we stay long from the Bible where Christ's 
picture is, we are apt to form another sort of 
Christ in the soul, and a very carnal one, too. 
Many a professed Christian can consort fully 
with the world, separate himself from God's 
people, aud count the Bible stupid, and yet 
carry with him a supposed Christ. There is 
no security except in the ever fresh recurrence 
to the revealed "Word. There is the likeness 
of the ineffable One. "They are they," says 
Jesus, "which testify of me." The Christ in 
the waterfall or meadow, the Christ in the 
marble or on the canvas, the Christ in the 
aesthetic transports of the mind, the Christ in 
the softness of a social refinement may be a 
mere spectacular Christ of the imagination, 
a low, human Christ, and not the divine Je- 
sus who saves his people from their sins, who 
creates them anew, who expels from their 
hearts the love of the world by filling those 
hearts with himself, who sanctifies their mo- 
tives, aims, and principles, and in short in 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 61 

their entire lives substitute God for self. As 
we have seen, the Christ who is in us is intro- 
duced within us by the word. Just as the 
blood of the body is formed from the food of 
the body, so Christ, the blood of the soul, is 
formed from the word, the food of the soul. 
The written word becomes the personal Word 
within us. A Christ without the Bible is as 
impossible as a salvation without a Christ. 
Neglecters of the Bible are neglecters of 
Christ, however much they may beguile them- 
selves with some sentimental illusion, a pseudo- 
Christ in a pseudo-Christianity. The face of 
Jesus is so full of graces and glories that we 
cannot imagine it independently; we must look 
upon it to know it, and in the Bible only do 
we look upon it. There it is — that wonder- 
ful face of love and truth. The study of that 
face can never weary, the knowledge of its 
infinite beauty can never be complete. To 
go away from the Bible is to cloud over those 
features and introduce a distorting medium. 
Hence arise coldness, formalism, worldliness, 
and the anti-christ of religious dreaminess, 
which so many take in place of the Crucified. 



62 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

These considerations make it evident that a 
love of God's word is a requisite for the true 
Christ-life of the soul. There will be, there 
can be no true application to that word except 
by love, and there can be no love for that 
word except where there is love of Christ, of 
whom that word is the exponent. The two 
are correlated and reciprocal. The love of 
Christ brings us to the Bible. The love of 
the Bible brings us to Christ. The two are 
indissolubly united in the very nature of truth. 
"Woe to the soul that attempts their dissev- 
erance ! 

If any one, in the light of these truths, 
declares his desire to love the w r ord, as he 
appreciates his dereliction in the past, and 
asks for counsel, as he feels it a hard thing 
to love what he does not love, the answer is 
found in the same light which prompts the 
question. Your whole religious life is out of 
sorts, if you do not love God's word. You 
need a revolution in your life. You have 
habits to be mended, ways to be abandoned, 
duties to be assumed, for your present sys- 
tem of life is not formed after Christ and his 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 63 

word. You are to draw nearer to Jesus in 
a love-consecration, and that with his word 
in your hands ; and as in doing this, you feel 
that many a darling folly is slipping from 
your grasp, let them go. The love of Jesus 
will not bear such silly rivals. As Jesus be- 
comes more known, the Bible will be more 
prized, and as the Bible is more prized, Jesus 
will become more precious and powerful to 
you. It is the two, then, you are to seek. 
Not Jesus without the Bible — that would land 
you in sentimentahsm. Not the Bible with- 
out Jesus — that would make you a legal for- 
malist. But the Bible and Jesus together; 
and drive everything out of your path that 
would interfere with your seeking. 

If such a love of the word of God were rife 
in the church of Christ, we should see every 
Christian as eager to gain time for Bible 
meditation as he is to procure the morning 
paper. The desire would be before the sense 
of duty. As a consequence of this, he wmild 
Jcrtoio the Bible, its promises and precepts not 
only, but all its connections and inter-depen- 
dencies. More than that, the deep inner 



64 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

meanings of the word would be ever bub- 
bling up to him like the diamond waters of a 
mountain spring, refreshing his whole being, 
and making him forget the weariness and toil 
of life. He would become, as it were, in- 
spired by the divine truth. It would be so 
interwoven into his nature, that its heavenly 
principles would not have to be sought after, 
but would spontaneously assert themselves in 
all his movements. 

The perplexed questions of duty would all 
disappear before the tutored promptings of 
a Bible-pervaded soul. Casuistry would have 
no place where God's philosophy would rule. 
The life, surcharged with truth would, be- 
sides, electrify all its contacts with truth's 
power. If the church would thus feed ear- 
nestly and heartily on God's word, its whole 
tone of action and conversation would be 
marvellously changed. It would be taking 
the divine means of elevation to an angelic 
standard. The ordinary themes of material 
life would shrink to their subordinate position 
and the busy nothings which consume so much 
time and thought would be lost in the sub- 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 65 

stantial occupations of a healthy piety. Such 
power has the Bible and the Bible only. 
Such transmutations of the whole man can 
it alone produce, for it is the wisdom of God 
and the power of God in the receptive heart. 
Oh ! it is this power we need amid the mass 
of frivolity that encumbers the church, and 
makes it drag on its way so awkwardly and 
slowly towards the millennium. Millennium ! 
can it be that God's people are seeking and 
longing for its glories ? Is its sheen of beauty 
a captivating prospect to their faith ? Is its 
peace and holiness a star of guidance to their 
pilgrim feet? Nay, rather, are not ceiled 
houses and ephemeral comforts or displays 
contenting their thoughts and aspirations, and 
God's sweet coming dawn forgotten in the 
artificial lights of the present night-time? And 
is not it all this wrong arrangement of our 
Christian life that is making its most natural 
mistakes in our view of everything else? 
Does not it give death the very name as well as 
character which it has no right to in a Chris- 
tian's mind? Does not it emphasize every 
loss and disappointment with a tone of an- 

Healthy Christian. 5 



66 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

guish, where each should be arrayed with a 
crown of hope ? Does not it tarnish all the 
gold of love with the rust of selfishness ? Oh 
for faith in God's Bible, a faith that would 
work by love and gather daily the manna, 
lifting the thankful eye to the gracious heaven 
that sent it ! This is the angels' food. It is 
only they who love Egyptian slavery who can 
loathe it. The angelic character will prize 
the angelic fare. I would that the testimony 
of the dying saint whose heart is all aglow 
with the life-touch of the word, of the pov- 
erty-stricken child of God who revels in the 
eternal wealth of the Scriptures, of the de- 
spised and rejected believer who in the holy 
lore has learned how to despise all human 
contumely and scorn, of the heart smitten 
down to death that has achieved a glad resur- 
rection at the voice of the heavenly truth — I 
would that the testimony of these, mingling 
in one grand chord of celestial harmony, could 
be concentrated upon the souls of all who 
read this, and persuade them now to put 
themselves in full relation with the living 
oracles. It is as we listen to our God speak- 



THE SOUL'S FOOD. 67 

ing, that the great Gocl-life tingles through 
our souls; it is as we receive the sentiment 
and the logic of the skies that the dreariness 
and obscurity of earthly sentiment is lost, and 
the false and unsatisfying logic of the world 
is driven to its tomb. "Walking with God is 
the summit of privilege and happiness, and 
that exalted walk is found when the voice of 
prayer and praise has birth and sustenance 
in the soothing voice of God speaking through 
the revealed word, to the listening and enrap- 
tured spirit. Here is the secret that so many 
miss. They turn hither and thither in unrest, 
while their Beloved is near them in vain. 
They do not know the talismanic power of 
this neglected Book. No enchanted carpet, 
that bore the fabled prince to wished -for 
realms, could so transfer the soul to the com- 
panionship of glory. All stories fail to reach 
the high analogy, and represent the rare dis- 
coveries of peace and spiritual plenty to which 
the trusting heart is borne by this celestial 
vehicle of grace, which wears so earthly and 
so unpretending form. Fear not to give your- 
selves to the love of the Bible. There can be 



68 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

no idolatry here. Idolatry can only cling to 
the letter, but it is the spiritual voice of the 
word to which the Lord myites us, when he 
says, "Search the Scriptures — for they are 
they which testify of Jie." If you believe that 
that Lord Jesus is worth more than all be- 
sides, if you recognize your own salvation as 
his fond work, if you know that the all of God 
that can shine on human hearts resides in 
that blessed Christ, then leap to the happy 
task of learning that Saviour better by the 
means himself has provided. No longer let 
the Bible be a book respectfully neglected; 
no longer let its divine light reach you only 
through the imperfect media of human trea- 
tises or human lips; but press through, for 
the way is open to you, press through all 
interposing veils, and in the Holy of holies 
bathe your exultant spirit in the radiance that 
there overflows from the oracle of God. 




CHAPTEE V. 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR, 



; He THAT V/ALKETH WITH WISE MEN 
SHALL. BE WISE." Pf^OV. 13 : 20, 

*T is not good for man to be 
alone" was God's own declara- 
tion at the birth of the race. A 
man's society is as necessary to his 
growth as his individuality. Indeed 
he has no individuality except in society. He 
is born with tendrils, and begins with life to 
grope for something to clasp. His thoughts 
are not his own till he has communicated them 
to others, and his moral sense is but a blunt 
potentiality till it is developed toward his fel- 
lows. The Church of God is founded on this 




70 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

principle. It is an aggregation, or congrega- 
tion, with its infinite collateral supports. It is 
like the golden boards of the tabernacle stand- 
ing together and bound together by golden 
bars, preserving the unity of the Spirit by the 
bonds of peace, and forming together a dwelling 
for the God of the church, in which an accept- 
able service is offered and where the light of 
His glory shines from between the cherubim. 
The "assembling of ourselves together" is a 
token of the social union of believers in Christ 
and a divine hint of this essential principle of 
Christian growth and health. Hermitages 
and monasteries are Buddhist, not Christian 
institutions, defjdng the revealed will of God 
and the spiritual instincts of the new birth. 
As the fresh air is necessary for the lungs, by 
which they perform their renewing functions, 
and purify the blood of the body, so the society 
of believers is necessary to the spiritual life, 
preserving it from a false entrance of the word 
and a false development of Christ in the soul. 
The word is the soul's food, but the society of 
God's people is the soul's inbreathing, and 
God .has ordained the one as well as the other 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 71 

that Christ may be truly and fully formed in 
us as the healthy blood is formed in the body. 
God's people to-day have to be instructed 
in this great truth, as the Corinthian Chris- 
tians were instructed by Paul. The Corinthian 
Christians fell into the society of worldly peo- 
ple, the usual arguments of rank, position, 
wealth, fashion urging them to this course: 
The apostle traces their spiritual misfortunes 
to this sad error. He shows them that their 
social relations should be confined to believers ; 
that between the soul with Christ and the soul 
without Christ a great gulf was fixed — blessed 
be God, not an impassable one, and hence 
courtesy, kindness, and compassionate interest 
might stretch across it, but yet it was a great 
gulf — wiiich forbade the communion of inti- 
macy and the confidential relations of the 
inner friendship. A bridging of this gulf was 
a betrayal of truth, an alliance with the ene- 
my, a degradation of the holy standard, a 
reproach to Christ. Hear the apostle's words : 
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with 
unbelievers ; for what fellowship hath righte- 
ousness with unrighteousness ? or what com- 



72 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

munion hath light with darkness? and what 
concord hath Christ with Belial ? or what part 

hath a believer with an unbeliever ? 

Wherefore come out from among them and be 
ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the 
unclean thing ; and I will receive you and will 
be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons 
and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." If 
all this does not refer to the social relations of 
Christians, to what else can it refer? That 
the Corinthians were idolaters does not help 
the matter, for while that fact is objected 
against them as one argument for separation 
from them, yet the main argument is that they 
were unbelievers. The apostle's argument and 
apostolic order are, therefore, for to-day as 
for then, for this nominally Christian land as 
for pagan Corinth. This krepo&yia or unequal 
yoking together is the social intimacy of be- 
liever with unbeliever. An idolater is no 
worse than any other unbeliever. The unbe- 
lief is what does the mischief in society. It 
steals unobserved into the Christian's heart 
from his contact with moral and excellent un- 
believers, and the poison is more subtle as the 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 73 

unbeliever is more moral and high-minded. 
Christ is unthroned and a new Christ is intro- 
duced. The believer wishes to be on the same 
plane with his intimate friend, and so lowers 
his distinctive and specific truth to the level 
of some general religion, which is at bottom 
the substitution of a self-philosophy for reve- 
lation. In this way, hearts that have been 
enlightened by the Holy Spirit to behold the 
cross have given up both light and cross in 
order to perform the behests of a high-toned 
friendship. Beauty of sentiment and even 
philanthropy are used in cementing this "une- 
% qual yoking," against which it is perilous to 
argue, for noble sentiment and philanthropy 
are fine things and they demand recognition 
and homage from all ; and so by these specious 
means the Christian is un-Christed and thrown 
into a wide and dreary sea of natural religion, 
the religion of birds, beasts, and fishes. 

Another style of mind fares no better — in 
outward appearance, worse. In this case the 
believer by social communion with unbelievers 
who love and live for display, soon begins to 
form the same tastes and cultivate the same 



74 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

desires with them. The gay life is led, the 
spiritual promptings to a useful life are re- 
pressed even to paralysis, worldly excitement 
becomes the only food the soul can feed on, 
and the name of the holy Christ is dragged by 
the apostate believer into this career of mock- 
ery. Sometimes gross sins, such as those 
which even the world proscribes, yawn to en- 
gulf such a straying believer, putting a con- 
demnation upon him in his own sight which 
he had long since had in the sight of the 
angels. 

Another style of mind, by this unequal yok- 
ing, is found making moneyed gains by low* 
and selfish ways, grinding the faces of the poor 
and taking advantage of others' misfortunes 
under the robber's plea, "all is fair in trade." 
By a close association with the unbelieving in 
the conduct of financial business, not only are 
the heavenly graces of forbearance, charity, 
and brotherly love quenched, but common 
justice is abused. Christians cheat one an- 
other under the name of business transactions ; 
they accumulate riches by deceit and fraud ; 
they leave debts unpaid while they indulge in 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 75 

luxurious living, taking advantage of some 
technicality of weak human law and forgetting 
the unalterable divine law ; they bring up their 
children for the same feverish mammon-wor- 
ship and plunge them into the same temptations 
with the specious plea, "Oh! all the world 
does it ; we must not run counter to the cur- 
rent of life." Such are some of the manifold 
and fearful evils which arise for the Church of 
Christ from this hepo&yia or unequal yoking 
together of believers with unbelievers. Young 
and thoughtless Christians, without much ex- 
perience, have very little idea of this truth, 
and are ready to combat it with much indig- 
nation. " Is not the Gospel liberal ? Does it 
not preach charity ? and now am I to give up 
my intimacies with my sworn friends on the 
ground of a Gospel demand ? That would be 
a narrow Puritanism — a wretched bigotry — 
I '11 do nothing of the kind. I will have friends 
who are not believers." And so the will, cap- 
tivated by the world, makes its indignant 
decision, while the Holy Spirit speaks in vain 
with Warning voice, "What part hath a believer 
with an unbeliever ?" The love of holy things 



76 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

steals away so imperceptibly — the love of 
worldly things steals in so imperceptibly — the 
whole transmutation is so very natural, with- 
out jar or surprise, that the young Christian 
does not realize the dreadful change. The 
young man must go into business, but he 
forgets that it is his Christian duty to discrimi- 
nate in business ; and the young woman must 
go into society, but she forgets that it is her 
Christian duty to discriminate in society. Nei- 
ther into business nor society have I a right 
to go, except by the Lord's own ways. If I 
do otherwise, I lose all the Lord's privileges. 
And to go into either of them through worldly 
intimacies is to despise the Lord's way alto- 
gether. 

" But oh ! how much I should have to give 
up ! " says the young Christian, thinking of 
worldly successes, worldly applause, the gains 
of avarice or vanity. Very well. Did you 
never hear Jesus say anything about plucking 
out a right eye and cutting off a right hand 
for him ? This is the very eye he wishes you 
to pluck out— the very hand he wishes you to 
cut off. It will save your soul. This worldly 



THE SOUL'S FEESH AIR. 77 

society is sapping your spiritual vitality. You 
are too young to know the full force of the 
truth. Take older Christians' word for it. 
Take Christ's word for it: "What part hath a 
believer with an unbeliever?" 

And now let us look at the positive side of 
this question. Let us ask how a believer is to 
form his social alliances, since we have seen 
how he is not to form them. 

In general he is to select godly souls for his 
intimates. The divine word enunciates the uni- 
versal principle : "He that walketh with wise 
men shall be wise." The wisdom of which 
God's word treats is the wisdom which practi- 
cally recognizes the claims of God on the heart 
and life, and the wise man is the godly man. 
The first meaning of that passage in its high 
sense is, that godliness is promoted by com- 
munion with the godly; and the next inferential 
meaning is, that the proper communion of the 
godly is with the godly. We need not stop 
here to examine the psychological principle on 
which these truths are founded. Personal 
esteem, desire to please, self-approval, uncon- 
scious imitation, the necessities of social com- 



78 THE HEALTHY CHEISTIAN. 

bination — all these are elements of the working 
by which like begets like, by which social life 
is a crucible of assimilation. But more than 
assimilation is obtained. There is augmenta- 
tion — increase of force for good or for evil, in 
the alliances of society. "As iron sharpeneth 
iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of 
his friend." The old adage is universally re- 
ceived, "In union is strength." Social union 
strengthens all the distinctive features of the 
union. Is it a worldly society? The world- 
liness is intensified and raised to a higher 
power by the union. Is it a godly society? 
The spiritual truth and beauty of the alliance 
are enhanced by the very fact of the com- 
munion. 

In putting then the general principle into 
practice, there is, first, the duty of Christian 
parents to select the early companions of their 
children with care, and exclude the vicious 
and evil-disposed, even at the cost of sunder- 
ing friendships and alienating relatives. Better, 
far better to say farewell for ever to the 
parents, however dear, than to ruin your off- 
spring for ever by the contaminating influence 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 79 

of the ill-trained and sin-indulged children. 
Then, in riper years, when your children have 
understood their relation to God as redeemed 
by the blood of Christ — and the children of 
all Christians should early reach that under- 
standing and personal faith — it is for you to 
bestow much supervision upon the friendships 
that are formed in the tender, and heedless 
days of youth. You have the power to invite 
to your house the proper young friends and to 
keep out the improper. Exercise this power 
as to God. Let no laws of etiquette set aside 
the law of God. If you have to cut off whole 
families of the highest respectability and most 
desirable position from your circle, by refus- 
ing special home-friendships to their young 
people, out them off with the independence of 
an emperor. Let the dukes and marquises 
go, and good riddance to them, that your 
children may escape the pollution of the vain 
life with which their worldly children would 
inoculate them. Never let your children have 
the beginning of these low but fascinating 
tastes. It is the little beginning that whets 
the appetite for more, and then the indulgent 



80 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

parent begins to say, "How can I keep my 
dear children from society?" by "society" 
meaning simply tliis gay and worldly form of 
society; and this cry of the parent is a re- 
sponse to the cry of the child who has tasted 
the glittering vanity, " How could you coop 
me up and make my life to languish by im- 
prisonment?" where the dreadful imprison- 
ment and the cruel treatment, suggestive of 
the Tower of London and Smithfield, are only 
the withholding of the child from the poison 
of a fashionable or semi-fashionable life. If 
you would only begin at the beginning with 
your children, you would avoid all trouble on 
this score. Alas! too often you think far less 
of their souls' health and God's will than of 
earthly preferment for them and yourselves, 
and so you are drawn in, and they too, and 
sink in the vortex. 

But, secondly, turning from parents, I speak 
to young Christians themselves, and urge them 
to ally themselves with one another. Do not 
say that Christians are too few. How many 
intimate friends do you want? Six or eight 
are as many as one person can well manage. 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 81 

Two or three are a more available number. 
Can you not find six or eight Christian friends, 
who in taste and education and refinement 
suit you ? Did you ever try ? Did you ever 
ask God to help you find them ? The trouble, 
I think, has been in your utter carelessness in 
the matter. You have never felt it to be an 
important question. You must feel the truth 
from God, and then you will find the way to 
conform to it. 

The social side of our nature is not devel- 
oped, as it should be, in our churches. There 
is a repellant coldness that is unseemly and 
un- Christian. All the childish folly of caste 
and rank which belongs to the world as one 
of its bawbles is assumed by the Church of 
Jesus, which ought to live above it and despise 
it. Tosses of the head, supercilious airs, " I 'm 
better than you" looks, which are very suitable 
to an ignorant w T orld that has no God, are 
found among those who have been exalted to 
be the brothers and sisters of the Lord of 
glory. No denunciation of all this can be too 
strong. The church must make the breach 
between it and the world wider, must cut off 

Healthy Christian. 6 



82 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

all communications except those of courtesy 
and Christian help, must live within itself and 
thus nourish the Christ-life, and in its own 
Yv r ork among the poor, the ignorant, and the 
young must make and cement the social union 
of its own members. What a strange idea 
inhabits some Christian minds, that young 
Christians can only be happy when allowed to 
mingle with worldly people ! Society with 
Christian companions cannot produce happi- 
ness ! There is the same lamentable notion 
of divine things in such thinkers as in the boy 
who asked his father, " Father, when I get to 
heaven, if I am real good, wont God let me 
come down here on Saturdays and play?" 
"What a dreadful notion of heaven that boy 
had ! And what a dreadful notion of Christi- 
anity and Christians must that mind have that 
thinks a happy life on earth must be spent in 
worldly associations! The Church of Jesus 
has within it all the elements of social happi- 
ness. It is our fault if we do not utilize them. 
The social evening, that centres around a 
Scripture reading, or that ends with the wor- 
ship of the Heavenly Father, who gives us the 



THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 83 

social happiness, is only distasteful to the 
heart that has been weaned away from God 
by the seductions of a godless society. The 
sweetest and tenderest relations of social life 
would be nurtured in such an atmosphere, in- 
stead of the formal, selfish, jealous, hypocriti- 
cal excitements which have so largely usurped 
and monopolized the name of society. The 
recreation of such reunions would promote 
the vigor of health in body and soul, and fit 
every one for his or her appropriate duties of 
the family and home, instead of making those 
duties insipid and onerous, and causing them 
to be slighted as is done by the feverish 
nervousness generated in the false social ways 
of the world. Family divisions would be 
avoided, and all that dreariness which marks 
so many Christian households would be want- 
ing. The family ties strengthened would 
preserve the young from the attractions of out- 
side and questionable amusements which now 
lure millions to their ruin. Does the question 
arise in any mind, "How can I, already en- 
tangled in this net of evil, extricate myself ? 
I am now fully committed to this false society. 



84 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

I have my worldly intimacies and all the 
engagements which they naturally demand. It 
were comparatively easy for one beginning life 
and free from these embarrassments to select 
a Christful circle of associates and friends, but 
how can I?" The reply is, "You are to culti- 
vate a taste you have vitiated'' That requires 
determination and prayerful attention. More- 
over, in all the ways your judgment (not your 
taste) suggests, you are to withdraw from your 
mistaken alliances, substituting for them those 
that God will approve, and in this way help 
to reform your taste. In short, you have a 
work to do. The change will not come like 
the opening of a flower or the fall of a leaf, 
but your higher powers must do what your 
higher sense recognizes to be God's will. In 
such a work the Holy Spirit will be with you 
and give you success in the end and joy in 
the way. 

" He that walketh with wise men shall be 
wise." The world's people are not wise, and 
God's people ought to know it. Wisdom has 
its criterion just beyond the grave. By that 
let us be ready to be tested. Let us be as 






THE SOUL'S FRESH AIR. 85 

singular as need be, if only with our Lord 
Jesus himself it can be said of us, " Wisdom 
is justified of her children." The company 
we keep is an index of the heaven we seek. 
Do we expect the association of the wise here- 
after ? We shall form their alliance now. 

As we said at the outset, Christ is formed 
healthily and fully in him alone who breathes 
the air of Christian intercourse. 





CHAPTEE VI. 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE 
FAMILY. 



IN THE 



"Exercise thyself unto godliness : 
for bodily exercise* profiteth 
little, but godliness is profit- 
able unto all things, haying 
promise of the life that now 
is and of that which is to come." 
i Tim. 4:7, 8. 

'HEBE may be to the Christian a 
regular feeding upon God's word 
and also a true communion with 
God's people, and so Christ be formed 
in him daily, while yet there may be 
a great deficiency in his spiritual life. Remem- 
ber the figure. The body may feed on healthy 

* I take Ckrysostom's and De Wette's view of cwfLdTiKy 
■)V!ivaaia. 




THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 87 

food and breathe a healthy air, but unless it 
exercise itself in this air, the assimilation will 
be imperfect and the secretions irregular. So 
there must be an exercise of the spiritual man, 
an experimental use of his graces, if the word 
is to profit him as it should. We have seen 
how that word should be the man of his coun- 
sel and be loved by him in that capacity, and 
we have seen how his intimacies should be 
formed among those who have like precious 
faith in Jesus with himself. Let us now note 
the necessity and character of that exercise of 
his gifts by which his true spiritual health is 
promoted. 

Paul's entreaty to Timothy, which we have 
placed at the head of this chapter, is to " exer- 
cise himself unto godliness," to- act in his Chris- 
tian life as the athlete acts in his bodily 
training and development. It is (so to speak, 
with reference to the Greek word gymnasia 
used by Paul) a charge to Timothy to make 
constant use of spiritual gymnastics. The 
comparison is direct. Bodily exercise is a 
benefit, but only for a short time, (see margin,) 
but the exercise of the soul in its graces is for 



88 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

all time and eternity. The health of the soul 
is far more important than the health of the 
body; and all we do here to promote the 
health of the soul tells upon the soul's history 
for ever. This is the apostle's argument. Let 
us apply it. 

I. In looking at the necessity of spiritual 
exercise, we draw from the body's analogy 
that exercise conduces to health by quickening 
the circulation, dissipating false accretions, 
and bringing into play the utmost corners of 
the respiratory organs. Putting this into a 
spiritual translation, we have this : that spir- 
itual exercise conduces to spiritual health by 
making the presence of Christ more vividly 
and intensely felt, (for Christ is the blood of 
the soul,) by shaking off morbid views and 
prejudices, and by developing the social Chris- 
tian life to the fullest degree, for the respira- 
tion of the Christian is in the atmosphere of 
Christian communion. We may add, that 
where these results follow this cause, there is 
also a grand, healthy appetite for the word, 
the food of the soul. But let us look at each 
detail a moment. 



THE SOUL'S EXEUCISE. 89 

1. The exercise of our gifts conduces to 
spiritual health by making the presence of 
Christ more vividly and intensely felt and 
operative in the soul. 

"We all know how hearty exercise of the 
body makes the blood tingle to the very ex- 
tremities with a glow (?f vigor. We feel the 
oneness of our frames by this self-assertion of 
the physical life in all its parts, a oneness of 
cooperation and harmony, and not a oneness 
of conflict and discord as that which pain 
might give. Just so, when a Christian takes 
an active part in the common Christian life 
and ministers to it with the free use of his 
gifts, the very needs of the exercise bring 
Christ uppermost to his thoughts. His de- 
pendence upon his Lord for strength and. 
enlightenment is felt, and the sweet comforts 
of his Lord's help is his rich reward at every 
step. There is no such bliss to the soul this 
side heaven as the consciousness of the Ee- 
deemer's full presence. It is not the pleasure 
of a beautiful sentiment striking the aesthetic 
perception, nor is it. the Archimedean delight 
of discovery before a new glimpse of intellec- 



90 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

tual truth, but it is the ineffable joy of a felt 
union with the living God, of the direct and 
all-supplying love of the divine Saviour. It is 
the realization toward the Maker and Ruler of 
all of the phrase which grace teaches faith, 
"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." 
It is beauty and truth not beheld, but lived. 
I know of no way to this high and holy reali- 
zation but that of the exercise of our spiritual 
abilities as God has given them. Mere con- 
templation will not do it. That is apt to make 
dreamers and to deceive the soul with senti- 
mentalities. It will develop self rather than 
Jesus. In the look, the word, the act for our 
Lord w T e forget self and receive the joy of the 
Lord. 

2. The exercise of our gifts conduces to 
spiritual health by shaking off morbid views 
and prejudices. These tokens of spiritual dis- 
ease come generally from the ignorance that 
attends on the vis inertice or sluggishness of 
the soul. The analogies of truth are not ob- 
served, the interfacings and practical modifi- 
cations of doctrine are ignored, and hence 
some notion is cultivated at the expense of 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 91 

others, and a Christian cheats himself into 
believing the redness of inflammation to he 
the glow of health and a morbid swelling to 
be the fulness of vigor. All sorts of queer and 
pernicious doctrines are tenaciously held — 
they may be either on the one hand in the 
service of asceticism, or on the other in the 
service of self-indulgence. The diseased symp- 
toms appear in both directions, perhaps more 
commonly in the latter. Now, what the patient 
wants is simple exercise for Jesus — an activity 
of his spiritual functions — the use of Christian 
society not only to receive influences there- 
from, but to bestow influences thereon ; and 
when his soul is shaken in such exercise, as 
well as in positive action toward the uncon- 
verted, his sickly excrescences will be shaken 
off, and his Christian character become sym- 
metrical and wholesome. The apostolic char- 
acter is formed in apostolic occupation. The 
mere spiritual cultivation of self is the way to 
hinder true self-cultivation. 

3. The exercise of our gifts conduces to 
spiritual health by developing the social Chris- 
tian life to the fullest degree. The sympathies 



92 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

are aroused from their depths, the profoundest 
recesses of our being are touched by the vivid 
realizations of Christian brotherhood, and the 
Christ-life of each is felt on each in heart- 
recognitions that are like the intercourse of 
heaven. "We have noted the analogy in the 
deep inbreathing in bodily exercise by which 
the remotest lung-cell is distended and the 
life is in fullest motion and efficiency. Here 
is the glory of true Christian society, not the 
sepulchral formality which some exhibit, who 
make Christian society a conscience-task as 
over against the worldly society they revel in, 
but that which warm-hearted Christians enjoy 
as they perceive in each other (with all their 
faults) the lineaments of Jesus. It is this 
which gives an electric thrill to life and makes 
society a heavenly thing. The exercise of our 
spiritual gifts brings us inevitably into such a 
social experience. The sons of the prophets 
go in companies. If you speak to the unre- 
generate, you wish a kindred heart to beat 
with yours in the action ; and if you contem- 
plate the goodness of God in any of its aspects, 
you would have another heart made a con- 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 93 

noisseur by grace to double your joy by joining 
you in the contemplation. Activity for the 
Lord will always bring you into close union 
with the people of the Lord. 

Such, then, are the elements of the necessity 
of spiritual exercise for spiritual health. We 
proceed to detail, 

II. The character of that exercise. 

A mistake is very often made by earnest 
Christians in supposing that activity for Christ 
must always be ha one of the more apparent 
forms of teaching a class or making missionary 
visits. Now these two forms must ever be 
paramount in the church's view. The teach- 
ing of God's word and the visitation of the 
destitute are specified in the Scriptures as 
potent and practicable forms of glorifying 
Christ's name. Wherever we have the oppor- 
tunity to undertake these royal styles of 
Christian exercise, undoubtedly we should use 
it. The number we can influence in a class, 
and the sympathy w^e can show to the suffer- 
ing, make these forms of Christian work 
preferable to all others. But Christian exer- 
cise has a far wider application. It is the 



94 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

positive exercise of every grace that tends 
God-ward or to complete godliness. The 
practice of forbearance, gentleness, meekness, 
self-restraint, and holy earnestness in the daily 
duties and occurrences of life, in the family, 
in the haunts of commerce, and in the offices 
of professional -activity is itself a wholesome 
spiritual exercise. But there is much more to 
be done than this. Each sphere of life pre- 
sents its own claims and opportunities. 

1. Are you a parent ? Then it is yours to 
provide systematically for the education of 
your children in the truth ; and here is a field 
of Christian effort directly at hand, full of 
advantage to yourself as to others, and from 
which no possible excuse can exempt you. 
Conversation with your children upon vital 
truths of revelation with endeavors to bring 
out their active appreciation, prayer with them 
that will ever make most sacred the memory 
of your instructions and impress upon them 
the sense of God's presence in the family, 
regular instruction from God's word, so that 
they become familiar with the Bible as the 
book of the heart — these are the forms of 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 95 

Christian exercise which God sets before you. 
To the mother especially do these home minis- 
trations appertain. She is, or should be, 
always the careful executive of home. Her 
eye should watch all the details of the family 
and her direct influence should be hourly felt 
in every part of the household. As familiarly 
acquainted with all, and as looked to for coun- 
sel and direction by all, she should, as the 
Lord's representative, see that the Lord's 
truth is made known to her children and her 
servants. Many mothers find it no hardship 
to dress and adorn their daughters for balls, 
to initiate them into all the hollow cant of 
ball-rooms, receptions, matinees, and operas, 
and to accompany them into the frivolous 
excitements of the world, while they have no 
time or strength to teach them the word of 
God or to train them as disciples of Jesus. 
These Christian mothers bring many a woe to 
the Church of Christ. If they had no chil- 
dren, we might pass them by without emphasis, 
but through their children they are operating 
with formidable power upon future generations 
to degrade Christianity and defile the streams 



96 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

of truth. The true disciple of the Lord, find- 
ing herself at the head of a family, will use 
time and talent, first of all, to consecrate her 
household unto Him ; and in doing this, she 
will find very soon that the demands of the 
gay, godless world must be flatly resisted. The 
difficulties that often occur with Christian 
mothers arise from a want of perception of 
this fact : that a training for the world and a 
training for Christ are incompatible ; that this 
point-blank refusal to the world is an absolute 
necessity for the spirituality of the family. 
The mother sees all her acquaintances edu- 
cating their daughters to be butterflies, and 
she must do the same. How can she make 
herself conspicuous by saying "No"? She 
must go with the multitude to do evil, rather 
than follow Christ. And so she wastes money, 
thought, and time on diamonds and dresses 
and hair-ornaments, and acts as Satan's agent 
to destroy her daughter's soul. Her con- 
science frequently rebukes her with neglect of 
her daughter's higher interests, but the rebuke 
is answered by a hypocritical sigh, "O dear 
me ! this perplexing life ! I have no time for 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 97 

anything ! " Ah ! tell the truth, Christian 
mother, tell the truth : " Plenty of time for the 
world; but no time for God!" You have 
acted as though you felt hi your own heart 
that all real enjoyment was to be found in the 
excitements of the world, and so you have 
taught your daughter the same fearful false- 
hood, until religion in your house is a mockery, 
just the fag end of legalism and nothing more. 
The true disciple nips this mischief in the bud. 
She cuts off the world. She finds cheerful- 
ness and joy and rational amusement in a 
truly Christian life. She does not have to go 
to unbelievers to ask how to be happy. By 
cutting off the world, she has both time and 
taste to teach her family the ways of God. 
By doing this, she has achieved an independ- 
ence with all its peace that a million of dollars 
could not give. 

A practical question comes up here. How 
are we to act toward servants of a false and 
bigoted faith ? The answer is, to use discretion 
and prayer. We cannot rudely assault preju- 
dices. "We ought not to magnify points of 
difference. We ought not to excite suspicion. 

Healt .y Christian. 7 



98 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

We ought not to meddle with subordinate 
details of their creed or worship. But the 
mother of a family has a thousand opportuni- 
ties to say a word for Jesus to the servant 
attending her, without arousing any personal 
church-feeling. The duties of trusting the Sa- 
viour for his pardon and of seeking his Holy 
Spirit might be often urged without any dis- 
tinctive polemic being exhibited. 

Family prayer is a grand centre for house- 
hold piety. The servants of a different faith 
may not appear, and they should never be 
forced ; but the family proper should always 
be gathered at this holy service. And it 
should be made an honest, earnest, touching 
service. The prayer should be felt by the 
leader, who ought to be the father of the fam- 
ily, and the Scripture should be read with 
reverence and attention. Oh ! how much in- 
fluence for life goes forth from the family altar ! 
The children carry the scene before their 
minds, of the family group and the father 
reading God's word, long after the father's 
body has crumbled into dust, and the mean- 
ing of that scene is a constant quickener to 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 99 

the conscience. The excuses for the neglect 
of family worship are all vain. "Want of time, 
want of ability, tardiness of the family and 
interruption of visitors are the pleas most fre- 
quently used. They scarcely deserve a reply. 
Make time, as you would for eating. Use a 
written prayer, if you cannot make an extem- 
poraneous one ; insist, as father of your family, 
upon a punctual attendance of all the mem- 
bers, and invite your visitors to bow the knee 
with you. Never let an excuse find itself at 
home in your religion that you would thrust 
out of your business. Sunday may be made 
a high day of profit to your family. Gather 
your children about you on the holy day. 
Read -together w r ith them from the Word. Let 
them talk with you freely about what they 
read. Encourage their questions. Search 
with them for answers, if they are not at hand, 
and set them to searching. Children are soon 
delighted with this looking up truth. Then 
pray and sing with them ; tell them stories of 
your own Christian experience and of God's 
good providence to you ; talk to them of the 
works of God in nature and grace ; read to 



100 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

them the narrative of some true life ; explain 
some picture of Bible story; and so most 
cheerily and happily use the golden opportu- 
nity of the day of rest for your family's lasting 
benefit in the Lord. Remember that no Sun- 
day-school can shoulder a parent's responsi- 
bility, nor can it wield a parent's power. The 
parent was commissioned and ordered of God 
to conduct the spiritual education of his chil- 
dren when God first founded and organized 
his church upon earth. "Thou shalt teach 
my words diligently unto thy children, and 
shalt talk of them w T hen thou sittest in thy 
house, and when thou walkest by the way, and 
when thou liest down, and when thou risest 
up." That divine ordinance has never been 
abrogated. There is in it a principle that 
time never can destroy. Here, then, Christian 
parents, is one of the methods of the exercise 
of your spiritual gifts, in which your spiritual 
health is advanced. Are you engaged in it ? 
Is the truth of God written upon the posts of 
your house and on your gates ? Have sacred 
associations been planted by you in the fruit- 
ful soil of home, whose fruit shall refresh your 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 101 

children to all generations ? If you have been 
remiss here, for the sake of your own spiritual 
health be remiss no longer. Rise up, as a 
servant of God, shake off lethargy and all 
excuses, cut off all associations that interfere, 
and make your home a temple of the Lord 
God of salvation. Go forward in mind to your 
last hour upon earth and take a view of all 
your excuses from that stand-point. See how 
trivial they appear. Then re-consecrate your 
family to the Lord. Rejoice in the spiritual 
work that this lays upon you. It will quicken 
your whole spiritual being, animate your faith, 
sharpen your appetite for the truth, and give 
your life a zest you never knew before. You 
wnll, moreover, in making your house a bethel, 
institute the strongest practical antidote against 
the world-poison that is spread through the 
atmosphere and which corrupts the very vitals 
of religion. Tou will be furnishing to your 
children, not an ephemeral pleasure which 
will at last disgust the soul that sought it, but 
an abiding joy in the consciousness of a family 
bound together by heavenly ties and dwelling 
for ever in the blessed light of God. 




CHAPTER VII. 




THE SOUL'S exercise: in 
CHURCH RELATIONS. 

'HE church of Christ has life and 
organization, and is thus prepared 
for growth. Its Author and Head 
expects it to grow. The Spirit's ex- 
hortations through the inspired apos- 
tles have this growth of the church their con- 
stant theme. Its continuance on earth is for 
the very purpose of growth. The only true 
solution of the postponement of judgment 
upon a guilty world is found in the increase 
of Christ's church, and the development of 
the divine seed. Now this growth of the 
church consists of two parts, the furtherance 
of grace in the converted soul, and the con- 
quest of new souls by the same grace. By 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 103 

the former the church grows deeper, by the 
latter it ejrows broader. 

To whom is this responsibility of growth con- 
fided ? Have we any authority for selecting 
any body or class of men in the church and 
placing this distinctive duty in their hands? 
Is there any warrant in Scripture for count- 
ing the officers of the church (whatever name 
we may give them) as the exclusive agents of 
God in building up the spiritual Zion? The 
love of power on one hand, and the love of 
ease on the other, have confirmed this error, 
so that over a large part of nominal Chris- 
tendom the fallacy is working, and its nat- 
ural result is found in a ceremonial and for- 
mal church. The gospel idea of the church 
is that of a body, where every member has 
its appropriate function in building up the 
w r hole, where responsibility is equally shared 
by all, and the privileges of activity equally 
enjoyed by all. Diversity of gifts and hence 
diversity of operations are to be noted, but 
nowhere do we learn that there is to prevail 
a distinction of gifts and no gifts. The same 
Spirit, from whom comes every endowment, 



104 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

moves in all. The power to work for Christ 
is not in the natural faculties, but in the 
Spirit. The most imposing natural faculties 
are nothing without the Spirit, and the Spirit 
is powerful to accomplish the grandest results 
where the natural faculties are weak and con- 
temptible. These truths, which are the very 
A B C of spiritual knowledge, have to be reit- 
erated, when w r e are discussing the subject 
of Christian work, for faith seems ever to fail 
in accepting them, and the church is full of 
idlers because of the excuse of the lack of 
natural faculties. 

We have already addressed heads of fam- 
ilies and pointed out to them the golden 
opportunities God has set before them in the 
careful training of their children and house- 
holds in the truth. "We now take a wider 
range of remark, and call upon every Chris- 
tian to do his part hi the organization of be- 
lievers which we call a particular church, that 
is, his part of the church universal. In this 
assembly of believers for praise, prayer, in- 
struction, and mutual sympathy and edinca-. 
tion, we see the fairest type of the heavenly 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 105 

society that can be found on earth. This 
concourse of saints is not only a banquet of 
divine love, but also in some sort what the 
Greeks called an "eranos" or feast to which 
each guest contributes something. It is first 
very clear that no one man can pray or praise 
for another. If one leads, all should follow 
audibly or inaudibly as the case may be ; but 
surely there is no worship where there is no 
following. A listless demeanor or intermit- 
tent attention, as if a Christian were at a 
spectacle, is a complete breach of divine order 
and a prostitution of the sacred occasion. "We 
may expect the world to exhibit such conduct 
in the assembly, but where is the believer's 
heart that he should imitate the world in this 
his high place of privilege ? The same course 
of thought holds good with regard to the 
instruction given by those appointed to the 
work. No Christian has a right to go to hear 
merely a pleasant speech, to make eloquence 
the object of his search, in going to the 
congregation of the saints. There is fearful 
remissness and injurious error here. Chris- 
tians are seeking sensation, excitement, amuse- 



10G THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

ment, when the one thing to be sought is 
instruction from God's word. If that is not 
given, a Christian has a right to complain; 
but when that is given, it is every believer's 
duty to listen reverently not to man but to 
God, and so receive the divine seed into a 
good and honest heart. 

There is another exercise in the assembly 
in which every Christian should engage. Giv- 
ing is worship. Jehoiada placed the chest 
for offerings next to the altar of sacrifice. The 
apostle ordered collections to be made for the 
poor on the Lord's day. The giving to the 
Lord of our substance has always been, from 
the beginning of the church, an act of wor- 
ship and a means of grace. No Christian has 
a right to except this from his worship. If 
a widow whose whole fortune was two mites, 
which made together one farthing, was by 
our Saviour commended for her pecuniary 
gift to the Lord's cause, who is there that 
can reasonably excuse himself on the ground 
of poverty ? Christian men worth thousands 
and hundreds of thousands contract their 
whole souls into mean proportions, and rob 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 107 

themselves of large enjoyment in the divine 
life by putting their ten cents into the plate, 
while the poor excuse themselves altogether 
from giving. All this is wrong. The pecu- 
niary gifts of God's people ought to be multi- 
plied by a hundred, and then the giving church 
would be richer and happier for its gifts. 
Every one should give, whether rich or poor. 
The cent of the straitened is as much needed 
for worship as the dollar of the richer. The 
poor man should no more omit giving be- 
cause of his poverty, than an illiterate man 
should omit praying because of his grammar. 
When we consider giving as w T orship, then we 
see this matter in its true relations. Exercise 
unto godliness is incomplete without a liberal 
hand in God's name. 

But besides these common acts of worship 
in the assembly, there are others that apper- 
tain to the more general life of the church. 
Visiting the poor and suffering is expressly 
recorded by the Spirit as a mark of pure 
religion. Our Saviour emphasizes this in his 
picture of the judgment. How is it that half 
the Christians in the world never think of this 



108 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

exercise ? How many leave it to benevolent 
societies, or agents, or ministers, forgetting 
that it is a personal duty that no one can set 
aside without directly disobeying the Lord 
Jesus. God means your graces to grow by 
your contact with the suffering, by your min- 
istry to the sick and sorrowing, by your sym- 
pathizing relief brought opportunely to the 
garret of the destitute. How can you refuse 
God's method and prosper? Are you afraid 
that such visiting will oblige you to give 
money? Then let that be an argument for 
your going. You need just that grace. Do n't 
say you have no means to give, when you can 
wear rings and necklaces and diamonds. Try 
the virtue of selling a diamond pin and giving 
the proceeds to the needy, making the poor 
widow's heart to leap with joy. It may be 
the grandest step in Christianity you ever 
took, since you were converted. "When you 
have learned how to visit the afflicted system- 
atically, and how to comfort them with sub- 
stantial kindness personalty in the name of 
Jesus, you will have opened a new fountain 
of delight for yourself, such as you little 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 109 

dreamed of in the days of your selfish isola- 
tion. You will look more like Jesus than 
you ever did before. Go modestly, not as if 
you were a superior going to see an inferior, 
for you are not; and go cheerfully, in the 
love of the Master, and go tenderly with con- 
cern for the sick or sad one, and go with the 
Scripture on your lips and a purse in your 
pocket, and go calmly and not in a hurry, 
remembering that this too is worship. Let 
every Christian engage in this personal visit- 
ing, man and woman. I think if this rule of 
Christ were obeyed, it would teach us to be 
less extravagant in our expenditures for self- 
ish ends, to be less dashing in our costume, 
to be less thoughtful for our petty pleasures, 
in short, it would raise us to a higher, nobler 
level, nearer the angels and nearer to God. 
Suppose we try it just for a month, and see 
how it results. 

Another form of Christian exercise unto 
godliness is found in teaching the word. The 
error that ordained men are alone to teach 
God's word is one of Satan's admirable de- 
vices to block the wheels of evangelization. 



110 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

There are indeed some who by their acquire- 
ments are fitted for a peculiar (and in some 
respects a higher) style of teaching. They 
have studied carefully, and under experienced 
guides, the original languages of Scripture, 
and have thoroughly digested the statements 
of revelation in. whatever of system divine 
things are capable of sustaining to finite intel- 
lects. On these men the appointed agents of 
the church put their seal of approbation, that 
the church may have confidence in them as 
called of God to be pastors and teachers. 
But this by no means exhausts the teaching 
of the church. There is to be teaching in 
the family, and teaching out of the family, 
whether it be in the Sunday-school or neigh- 
borhood visiting. The Bible is to be opened 
and its precious promises spread out before 
the child, the sick patient, or the friend of 
whatever sort; and for this high function 
every converted soul is capable. It needs no 
Greek or Hebrew, nor does it require "the 
laying on of the hands of the presbytery." 
It demands only a pious heart and an over- 
flowing love. When you have read a portion 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. Ill 

of the word, and pondered it, and been illu- 
mined and warmed by the new rays of truth, 
store up your treasure for another's benefit, 
and seek an opportunity to enrich a friend. Let 
no Christian fail to be a teacher of the word 
in some form and way as regularly and sys-y 
tematically as possible. The converse of the 
question in the second of Romans, is in per- 
fect analogy with the gospel scheme : " Thou 
that art taught thyself, teachest thou not an- 
other?" The knowledge you possess of the 
Word of God is enough to enlighten many a 
dark heart. Can you rightfully hide your light 
under a bushel-measure ? When God entered 
your heart, did he not made you a truth- 
bearer? What have you to show for your 
commission ? Where is the work you have 
wrought? To whom have you taught the 
wx>rd of God? With what child of sin or 
of sorrow have you read the pages that min- 
ister heavenly comfort and instruction ? Has 
not your Christian life been wholly or greatly 
defective in this duty? Can you not trace 
many of your own symptoms of spiritual un- 
healthiness to this lack? Is not your want 



112 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

of interest in and comfort from the Bible 
owing to your failure in making it known to 
others ? The Sunday-school teacher occupies 
a position of growth. He receives quite as 
much as he gives ; I think more. "We cannot 
overestimate the value of well-ordered Sun- 
day-schools for the training of both old and 
young in the church. And what is true emi- 
nently of the well-ordered Sunday-school is 
true of every form of systematic Bible instruc- 
tion. It is not only in the preparation that 
is necessary for the lesson, which increases 
the knowledge of divine things, but it is in 
the contact with a living soul receiving great 
truths that the teacher obtains his own bene- 
fit. The truths are enlarged in his own soul 
as he sees them impressing another; and his 
sympathy runs with the pupil by awakening 
his own impressions anew. 

Another form of Christian exercise unto 
godliness is found in utterance at the prayer- 
meeting. It is not to be expected that any 
man can arise and speak to edification among 
God's people without due preparation. The 
notion that any man is like a fountain, and 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 113 

it needs only the turning of a fawcet and the 
stream of useful speech will flow, is a mis- 
taken one. The men who appear to speak 
impromptu and with ease, are those who have 
thoroughly prepared themselves. This thor- 
ough preparation is the secret of their ease in 
utterance. The fault in our prayer-meetings 
is that Christians do not prepare themselves 
to speak to edification, and hence do not offer 
a word. Their inability to speak they think 
to be a natural lack, and hence they leave 
the duty to others, when their inability is 
simply owing to their neglect of preparation. 
What is to be prepared? Not an exhaustive 
essay. Not a sermon. Not a fine piece of 
rhetoric. If it were any of these, inability 
might be pleaded rightfully on the part of 
many. But that which is to be prepared is 
simply a fact-statement, as you would tell it 
to a friend, a word of personal experience, a 
view personally enjoyed of some passage of 
Scripture, anything that is brief and simple 
and calculated to warm or cheer the hearts of 
believers. If every Christian felt his duty in 
this respect, the leader of the meeting would 



114 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

not have to summon by name any particular 
member to guide the thoughts of the assem- 
bly, but only to designate which one of those 
that offered should take his turn to discharge 
this duty. This very readiness would add 
new life to the meeting, and increase its effi- 
ciency in all hearts. Diffidence in speaking 
to a hundred persons may be overcome by 
conscientious practice. Let the first words 
be few, and the simpler the better, and let 
the desire be to do one's part towards edify- 
ing the church. The diffidence will grow less 
at every utterance. Of course I do not refer 
to those exceptional cases where nervous dis- 
ease is a very just excuse from this form of 
Christian exercise. In all these exercises of 
exhortation or instruction, brevity, point and 
simplicity must be insisted on, and these qual- 
ities will make it an easier duty to the con- 
scientious soul? Where many are thus ready, 
we have the best guarantee against untimely 
dissertations, irrelevant harangues and empty 
wordiness, which ought to have no part in 
Christian assemblies. 

Nov/, my fellow-believers, I have put before 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 115 

you some of the ways in which the Lord calls 
each of us to exercise himself unto godliness 
in the midst of his church on earth. It re- 
mains for us to apply the truth by asking 
each himself the question, "Am I practising 
this system of spiritual strengthening? Am 
I taking this divinely-appointed means to pre- 
serve the vigorous vitality of my heaven-bom 
life?" 

One of the most frequent and plausible 
arguments against the practical adoption of 
these various forms of Christian exercise is 
the want of time. The mother's domestic 
duties, and the father's business duties are 
all-absorbing and leave no time for visiting or 
teaching the word, or preparing edifying words 
for the prayer-meeting, even if they allow 7 time 
for attending that meeting. The answer to 
this favorite argument is perfectly simple. It 
is that our eternal interests are superior to 
all else, and that any plan of life which leaves 
them out and neglects their furtherance ac- 
cording to God's appointments, is radically 
wrong and cannot receive God's blessing. 
Moreover, I know active business men and 



116 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

excellent house-keeping ladies who do find 
abundant time to attend to all these spiritual 
exercises, and to whom the visitation of the 
poor, and sick, and afflicted is a most happy 
relief from their domestic or business duties. 
And, still again, those who make the excuse 
have plenty of time to visit their friends, to 
read their favorite books, to do a large amount 
of amateur shopping, and to take their drives 
and excursions. The want of time is not an 
excuse we shall dare to use before the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ. Our convictions there 
will be too clear that selfishness occupied the 
time that the Lord wanted. 

Eemember what we have before shown, 
that regular exercise of our spiritual man is 
as necessary for spiritual health as our bodily 
exercise is necessary for the right and sound 
use of our physical functions; that revealed 
truth received into the soul by faith, and nur- 
tured by Christian companionship, must also 
be used in positive Christian activity toward 
others, if Christ is to be completely developed 
in us ; and this, if we are Christ's, should be 
our one aim. 



CHAPTER VIII. 




THE SOUL'S EXERCISE I IN THE 
WORLD WITHOUT. 

^)^>AVING considered two spheres 
of opportunity for the regular ex- 
ercise of our Christian graces, the 
one in the family and the other in 
connection with church organization, 
we turn now T to a third, that which is presented 
in our business life. It w T ill be borne in mind 
that this exercise is unto godliness — is a means 
ordained of God for the development of truth 
in us, to reject which is to consent to a stunted 
spiritual condition with all its consequences. 
Let this thought accompany all our investiga- 
tions upon the subject. 

Our life on earth is one and our character 
is one. We cannot separate our social life 



118 THE HEALTHY CHEISTIAN. 

from our domestic life, or our business life 
from either. The principles which operate in 
one will operate in all. Selfishness and trick- 
ery in business will be found in the family as 
equally selfishness and deceit. A man may 
put on two faces, but he can have only one 
heart. As everything goes to make up our one 
character in life, so our one character will act 
upon everything in life. All exceptions to this 
rule are phenomenal only. A man who acts 
the tyrant in his family may appear to be 
affable and yielding in commercial circles, but 
it is only in appearance. The iron hand wears 
a velvet glove for policy's sake. Sometimes, 
perhaps, his cunning is off its guard, and the 
tyrant appears. Such slips form the eccen- 
tricities of some men that are so inexplicable 
to their fellows. A godly man can no more 
shut out his business life from his religion 
than the sun can refuse to shine in one direc- 
tion. When it is attempted, the religion is 
proved, by that very fact, to be of a very low r 
order. It is like a stream in the desert that 
the sands absorb before it can fertilize. I 
know this type of strange Christianity is found. 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 119 

There are men who will meet with missionary 
boards and occupy positions of responsibility 
in the church, and yet go down to their office, 
store, or counting-room as thorough heathen, 
never saying a word to their clerks, or before 
their clerks, of the Kingdom of Christ; but, 
on the contrary, impressing their clerks and 
their customers with a sense of their hardness 
and unpitying severity, showing no sympathy 
or tenderness toward any, acting the part in 
real life of Shylock or Ealph Nickleby. What 
must be the effect of such a life upon the 
world in its estimate of evangelical religion? 
For the world does not read the Bible. It 
reads men. It sees the grand and leading 
firm of Messrs. Driver & Holdem. Mr. 
Driver built a large church in Driverville. He 
furnished the parsonage of the city church, of 
which he is a member. He gave the Sunday- 
school a noble library. He is chairman of 
the board for providing the destitute with the 
gospel. Alas ! his gifts have harmed the 
church more than benefited it. They have 
made the Sunday-school superintendent and 
the church officers and the trustees and the 



120 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

minister to close their eyes and mouths against 
his worldliness, and so to join hands with it. 
They always have a pleasant smile for Mr. 
Driver, although they know that he has just 
been engaged in a large "cornering operation." 
And as for Mr. Holdem, the partner, he is the 
man who makes such a beautiful prayer ; who 
instituted the daily prayer meeting, and sends 
the " Journal of Missions " gratuitously to ten 
thousand persons. He is also the man that 
broke the heart of a simple-minded Christian 
man from Kansas, who came to his store to 
ask aid for a struggling band of Christ's peo- 
ple there, by thrusting him violently out of his 
premises. He is the man who took advantage 
of the usury laws to give his creditors the 
go-by. He is the man who sells property to 
w r eak purchasers, so as to foreclose and regain 
the property with the first payment as clear 
gain. All Wall street knows Messrs. Driver 
& Holdem ; and although they are worth five 
millions at least, all Wall street watches them 
as carefully in any business transaction as it 
w r ould w r atch a state-prison graduate. 

What idea, I ask, will Wall street have of 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 121 

the Church of Jesus Christ, as it sees that 
church through the firm of Driver <fc Holdern ? 
And what real benefit do such men confer 
upon the church by their gifts, given as they 
are to blind others and their own consciences 
to their own heathenish character? It is 
high time that the church should prefer strait- 
ness and poverty rather than entangling alli- 
ances with such traitors to the truth. 

We have very strong doubts whether Dri- 
ver & Holdem were ever converted. We are 
forced to believe them hypocrites and nothing 
else. But there are others, of whose underly- 
ing faith in Christ w T e have no reason to doubt 
— men who have given satisfactory evidence, 
in crises of their lives, that they saw r the 
unseen and eternal. But these men leave all 
manifestation of their religion outside of their 
places of business. They are like automata, 
moving mechanically through their routine, 
but all soulless in the presence of their business 
companions. They defend their conduct by 
saying, " Only business in business hours." I 
take issue with their axiom. Where did they 
get it? Is it in God's w T ord? Is there not 



122 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

another sort of axiom in that blessed volume, 
that says, " Whether ye eat or drink, or ichat- 
ever ye do, do all to the glory of God "? That 
axiom tells me that my godliness should ooze 
out at every pore of my daily duties, when 
I'm selling silks or buying molasses, not by 
assumed cant and weak platitudes, but by an 
honest, manly, Christian style of doing busi- 
ness that would sparkle with its true courtesy 
and consideration, and so commend the Chris- 
tianity that lay behind it. A man of that 
stamp would know when to throw out the word 
in season for God ; when to correct firmly evil 
language or conduct ; when to encourage a 
desponding clerk ; when to have a private 
interview with some one dependent upon him 
and whom he could counsel as a father. Such a 
one would have no lack of opportunity to let 
his light shine in his place of business without 
harming an iota of his commercial or monetary 
interests. 

In some of the large Christian firms of 
England, where scores and hundreds of clerks 
are employed, regular morning prayers are 
established, and the head of the house reads 



THE SOUL'S EXEBCISE. 123 

and expounds a passage of Scripture daily to 
all, and on Sunday he has them all with their 
families in a Sunday evening Bible-class. This 
is a noble example. The relations thus estab- 
lished between employers and employed are 
of the right sort. Holy sympathies are created 
and nurtured between them, and they are all 
led in their business to serve the Lord. Who 
will brave public opinion and dare, for Christ's 
sake, to begin such a custom here ? We are 
too great cowards to be Christians. We are 
always wondering what the world will say; 
and if w T e surmise that it would ridicule a pro- 
jected action on the side of God and truth, we 
take care to be very quiet, perhaps hoping 
secretly that some one else will do it and meet 
the brunt, and then we can safely follow. Why 
should it not be known and said of our Chris- 
tian merchants, tradesmen, and mechanics, 
" These men fear God and serve him in all 
their business. An atmosphere of truth and 
godliness surrounds their lives " ? Is not this 
the only reputation a Christian ought to have 
in the world ? Why should we have to search 
the church records to discover if A. B. is a 



124 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

Christian ? Is that letting one's light shine ? 
Is that presenting oneself a living sacrifice to 
God ? Is that standing with one's loins girt 
about with truth? Oh, how unlike these 
Scriptural portraits of the true Christian are 
those who exclude their religion from their 
places of business ! We forget that Christi- 
anity is not a performance, but a life. If it 
were a performance, we might crowd the work 
into certain hours or days and leave the rest 
free. But it is a life, and if the life is vigorous 
and healthy, it cannot be eclectic in its exhi- 
bitions. It must overflow. The Christian 
business men we have just described are not 
pointed out by the commercial world as cheats 
and large-scale robbers. They do not belong 
to the class of Driver & Holclem. But their 
influence on Christianity is perhaps quite as 
evil. Those worldly men who happen to 
know their church-membership must consider 
religion, as seen in them, a very subordinate 
and insignificant affair. It is by no means as 
important as business and money. And so 
these worldly men are supported in their 
theory of putting off all thoughts of personal 



THE SOUL'S EXEKCISE. 125 

religion to a dying clay. Those who are not 
aware of the professed Christianity of these 
ashamed believers are injured in another way. 
They see their moral and upright lives, and 
conclude that Christianity is of no more use 
than a fifth wheel to a coach. " Here are men 
as good as anything we wish to see. They do 
not he and steal. They are honorable men 
and keep their engagements. They are re- 
spected by all, and trusts are reposed in them 
to any extent. What more does man want?" 
Now the real foundation of the commercial 
uprightness of these men is in their Christian 
faith. Men may be commercially upright who 
are not Christians, (although, generally, that 
sort of uprightness will* not bear a very rigid 
microscopic examination,) but in these cases 
to which we refer the correct commercial life 
is really the result of Christian faith, and it is 
disloyalty to God to hide that connection. It 
confirms multitudes in endeavoring to go on 
in life without God. It is a tacit testimony 
for irreligion. When we think how much of a 
man's life is spent in his place of business, it 
is startling to think of this exclusion of religion 



126 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

from the business field. It is virtually banish- 
ing religion from three-quarters of one's waking 
life. We can see at a glance how fearfully 
prejudicial it must be to one's own religious 
experience; what a desert it must make of 
personal piety. Imagine a tree with the sap 
removed from three-quarters of it, or a man's 
body with all signs of life confined to a quar- 
ter of it. What kind of vigor would there be 
in that tree or in that man? 

I know there rises up as a general objection 
to the visible presence of a religious life in 
business the fear of the charge of hypocrisy. 
The fear of hypocrisy is a very right one. We 
ought to dread hypocrisy. It is the worst of 
sins. It is the He unto God as unto man. 
Our Saviour used words of fierce indignation, 
not against the publicans and harlots, but 
against the hypocrites. But the fear of hypoc- 
risy and the fear of the charge of hypocrisy are 
different things. We ought not rashly and 
unreasonably to lay ourselves open to a false 
charge, but sometimes we are obliged to, if we 
would perform our duty before God. Daniel's 
praying might have been looked upon as sheer 






THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 127 

hypocrisy, its motive being considered a desire 
to show his independence of the king; but 
that possibility would not stop Daniel's pray- 
ing. Doubtless many charge Christians with 
hypocrisy in going to church, but that charge 
will not warrant a relinquishment of this high 
duty. If introducing living religion into your 
place of business is going to bring upon you 
the charge of hypocrisy, stand the charge like 
a Christian, so long as it is a lying charge, so 
long as you know you are not a hypocrite. I 
know there is a cheap twaddle that goes for 
religion with some shallow pates, or shrewd 
pates, as the case may be. It is very disgust- 
ing and every manly heart is repelled by it. 
But do not reject the pure gold because of the 
counterfeit. Be discreet, use common sense, 
be natural, and then be bold and independent. 
Do what you know to be right in the sight of 
God, and force those around you into respect. 
Let the community as little expect you to be 
a heathen hi your store as in your church. 

I have looked on the influence of such exer- 
cise of your spiritual life upon your own per- 
sonal growth in grace, for that is our subject 



128 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

— the means of developing the healthy Chris- 
tian. My allusions to influence and opinion 
without have been only to illustrate this sub- 
jective condition. If it were not for this 
circumscription of subject, it would be easy to 
show the immense importance of a positive 
Christianity in our business men in business 
hours for the spread of the truth. I could 
enlarge on the channels opened by commer- 
cial intercourse for gospel currents, and the 
power of young men nurtured under such 
commercial training for the spiritual welfare 
of the race. But my design precludes this 
direction of thought. It is the subjective in- 
fluence we are now studying. We are noting 
that the law of Christian growth forbids the 
repressing of the exercise of any of the divine 
gifts, at the peril of the spiritual welfare ; that 
a Christian who withholds the demonstration 
of his faith in any one department of his life 
thereby diseases his spiritual nature, dishon- 
oring God while he reduces his own capacity 
for the higher joys of the life of faith. 
The Lord as our shepherd leads us into 
green pastures and beside waters of rest, but 






THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 129 

our perversity makes the landscape a desert. 
We move among untried opportunities and 
have no right to murmur at our barren and 
unsatisfactory experience. The business life 
of the Christian might be to him a well-spring 
of spiritual refreshing. He might identify it 
with all that is holy and divine. Every busi- 
ness connection might contain a golden thread 
of godly recognition, and the purest and most 
truly religious associations might cluster around 
the buyings and sellings of trade. It is be- 
cause Christian men have so long worked upon 
an opposite and false principle that this propo- 
sition looks fairly startling. If they begin 
again from God to mould their business life 
anew, they would see that there is no conflict 
between religion and business, as they have 
practically taught, but that the religion of 
Jesus sanctifies business and belongs to it, as 
much as to the social and domestic sides of 
human life. And when they have made this 
discovery, they will then make the still more 
astonishing discovery that business sanctifies 
them. God has called no disciple to a duty 
that is not sanctifying, if used aright. If we 

He Ithy Christie. 9 



130 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

are not growing spiritually from our daily 
occupations, we may be sure that we are very 
wrong somewhere; we are divorcing them 
from the spiritual life, and so virtually making 
our business a clandestine dealing with the 
enemy. It is such a false system which makes 
some Christians say, under stress of conscience, 
" I 'm going to keep in business only a few 
years, till I gain so much, and then I 'in going 
to serve the Lord more systematically and 
zealously." My brother, what is to hinder 
you from serving the Lord systematically and 
earnestly in your business ? "Why have to go 
out of it, in order to be a consistent Christian ? 
Why not sanctify your business by erecting an 
altar in your counting-room? Your style of 
speech suggests that your business has some 
crooked ways in it that would not bear inspec- 
tion. If this be so, I the more earnestly appeal 
to you to cast out the demon from your store 
and let the Lord Jesus, your Lord Jesus, ever 
be by your side, at your ledger, behind your 
counter, in conference with your customer, so 
that you may exercise yourself unto godliness 
in all your doings. 




CHAPTER IX. 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE \ IN 
CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 




HAVE endeavored to show that 
the society of believers is the 
fresh air to a believer's piety, purify- 
ing his Christ-life from the false ad- 
ditions which accrue either from a 
morbid isolation on the one hand, or from 
worldly intimacies on the other. My pur- 
pose now is to show that this society of be- 
lievers is one of the appropriate spheres in 
which he is to exercise himself unto godliness. 
He is not only to be a recipient of good by 
these relations, but to be also a giver of good. 
And by the society of believers I do not 
mean an alliance with believers in acts of 



132 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

worship, a formal connection in what are 
known as cliurcli relations, bnt a social life 
with those who have the same hope, the same 
salvation, the same Christ. The necessity of 
forming such a relationship, the breaking up 
of many common habits which it implies, the 
complete abjuring of a trifling world, the wil- 
lingness to be considered peculiar, and con- 
trasted by that world — all these points we 
have already considered. It remains for .us 
now only to consider the forms in which a 
Christian may exercise his graces in such a 
godly society thus constituted. 

1. My first observation has respect to con- 
versation. I use the word in its modern 
sense, for verbal intercourse. God has en- 
dowed us with speech as the medium of com- 
munion and communication between soul and 
soul. By it the observation, logic and im- 
agery of the mind are projected into a condi- 
tion that can be grasped and used by another. 
Ideas that otherwise would be vague and 
formless, are defined by this high faculty of 
man, and by their very definition give birth 
to new ideas, which are formative in their 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 133 

turn, and so through language the mind grows 
in knowledge and wisdom. The beasts that 
are intended to remain stationary in their 
rudimental knowledge, creatures of an instinct 
that never grows, need little language; but 
man, bom to have dominion over the beasts 
and with capacity to partake of the divine, 
possesses alone of earth's inhabitants this 
grand endowment by which his progress may 
be insured, and his alliance with supernal 
beings is established. The prostitution of 
such a faculty to low and trifling ends is a 
fearful abuse of the divine grace and purpose. 
It is not only where lying and slander defile 
the tongue that speech is degraded, it is not 
only where a wicked heart makes the tongue 
the instrument of crime, but it is also where 
this noble faculty becomes the agent of what 
the apostle has called "foolish talking." Enter 
any ball-room, pass from group to group, and 
note the conversation that is common to all. 
Is the twittering of swallows more vacant? 
Petty scandal, commonplace compliments, 
threadbare wit — these are the loftiest terms 
we can use to designate the bubbles of prattle 



134 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

to which men and women degrade speech in 
their principal social reunions, for which they 
make their especial preparations. In this 
style of school the mass of what is most 
whimsically called "refined society " obtains 
its education, and so this senseless chatter 
becomes one of the characteristics of "refined 
society." Any proposition to elevate the tone 
of conversation is at once hailed as an auda- 
cious attempt to encroach upon the preroga- 
tive of fashion, and a desire to make every- 
thing sombre and dull. The lazy dawdle of 
the drawing-room magnifies every effort to 
convert it into something sensible as a presen- 
tation of the higher mathematics, or Hebrew 
roots. People forget that it is just as easy 
to talk sense as nonsense, if they will only 
form the habit. Sense does not mean pro- 
found study. Sense may be very simple. A 
peasant can talk sense. And a Christian 
ought to. * 

If we leave the ball-room and follow the 
ordinary social visitor from house to house, 
we find no higher standard of colloquy in 
general use. Dreary commonplaces or un- 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 135 

wholesome gossip meets us everywhere. If 
we take to the street, we find a shrill treble 
of laces and ribbons, and a running base of 
dollars and dividends, as the almost universal 
music of conversational life. 

Now, in direct opposition to all this, the 
believer is to use this large field of opportu- 
nity for the exercise of his religious acquire- 
ments. Not that each conversation of a Chris- 
tian is to be a sermon, or that he is never 
to talk without a testimony direct for Christ. 
Such a method would defeat its own end. 
But he is to be so full of the great fact of 
Christ's redeeming love, that he will naturally 
and easily turn anything in conversation to 
the advantage of the grand subject. More- 
over, his whole manner of treating all other 
subjects will be that of a Christian, so that 
he will show his believing soul even when he 
makes no verbal illusion to the truths of reve- 
lation. He will avoid w r ords and phrases, 
very common in the w T orld which smack of 
profanity or infidelity, and will not allow r him- 
self for a moment to descend to tattle or twid- 
dle. He can be humorous without being 



136 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

either low or flat, preserving a religion and 
dignity even in his pleasantry. 

If a soul is full of Christ's love, this high 
character of speech will not be a difficult task 
or exhibit the appearance of stiffness, but 
will be the natural effluence of its affections. 
It does not banish fun, but folly. It does 
not seek solemnity, but solidity. 

At times, indeed, the Christian will be sol- 
emn in his speech. "Where the right oppor- 
tunity offers he will, remembering his high 
commission of God, speak to his friend or 
companion of the things of eternity. This 
responsibility is but little understood, or, at 
least, but little accepted among the majority 
of Christians. It should occupy a large part 
of their thoughts, not as an unwelcome and 
inconvenient load, but as a glad duty for 
Christ's sake. It is a sad reflection that so 
few of Christ's people are known by their 
conversation, and that thus the influence of 
the church is curtailed, and strange inferences 
are drawn by the world with regard to the 
value of the gospel. A Christian who thus 
refuses to testify for Christ Is really testifying 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 137 

against him. Many Christians have dated 
their first true rapture in their religious expe- 
riences from the time when they dared to 
open their mouths boldly for the Lord in 
conversation with their friends. The breach 
in the wall of reserve has proved a road for 
heavenly delights to enter in. 

But not only in speech with the unregen- 
erate, but in conversation with converted souls 
a great revolution should be inaugurated among 
us. Why should not Christ's people, when 
they meet together, speak of him? Why 
should their dear Saviour be uninentioned, as 
if he w^ere dead, or as if his name had an ill 
omen in its use? Why should not conver- 
sation among Christians naturally gravitate 
toward the great themes of salvation. Re- 
member the suggestive passage in the prophet 
Malachi, "They that feared the Lord spake 
often one to another, and the Lord hearkened 
and heard it, and a book of remembrance was 
written before him for them that feared the 
Lord, and that thought upon his name. And 
they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, 
in that day when I make up my jewels ; and 



138 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

I will spare them, as a man spareth his own 
son that serveth him." By such frequent con- 
versation, on divine things, they are kept fresh 
and efficient in the soul, and one of the best 
securities against worldliness is established. 
The exercise is "unto godliness." In order 
to such a habit we must have in the first 
place a deeper and more living interest in 
divine things, for out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth speaketh; and then we 
must have a more familiar acquaintance with 
God's word, so that its texts should ever rise 
in our minds as the subjects of our remark. 
The lack of these two qualifications probably 
lies back of our failure in this important de- 
partment of spiritual exercise, and our reform 
must begin there. As in every characteristic 
action of a true Christianity, so here we see 
that a real separation from the world, a clear 
and seen distinction, is the will of God con- 
cerning us. 

2. The second method in which our Chris- 
tian life should exercise itself in society is in 
mutual service. It was said of Dorcas, she 
was "full of good works." Our social life 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 189 

might be almost made up of this holy mate- 
rial. Help is wanted by everybody every 
day in some form, help for body and help for 
soul. There are little disappointments to be 
assuaged, little obstacles to be cleared away, 
little provocations to be soothed down, little 
sorrows to be comforted, little hardships to be 
alleviated, besides the great evils to which we 
are all exposed ; and the Christian soul ought 
to be ever-ready and watching to minister to 
these constantly-recurring wants of our fel- 
lows. It is not only the actual relief in ex- 
ternal matters that is brought about by such 
a healthy system of "bearing one another's 
burdens," but there is a higher ministry to the 
sympathies of the soul. The magnetism of 
Christian friendship renews the desponding 
or disordered heart, and our oneness in Christ 
is made manifest. Such a manifestation is 
a heavenly balm, communicating peace and 
strength. The adroitness of a Christian per- 
ception will discover the secret springs of bless- 
ing, and lead out their refreshing streams. It 
is as a society founded on these principles of 
sympathy and active love that the Scriptures 



140 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

portray the church of Jesus, forming so marked 
a contrast with the world, where self-display 
and self-aggrandizement assume perhaps a 
cloak of courtesy in the intercourse of society, 
but where, notwithstanding, each soul is isola- 
ted and, according to the paradoxical prov- 
erb, even charity is cold. 

There can be no doubt that the social na- 
ture and requirements of man are better met 
and satisfied by an intercouse that has mu- 
tual relief and benefit as one of its constitu- 
ent elements, than by one which has only the 
connections of outward habit or fashion as 
its essential power. It is a mistake to sup- 
pose that idleness or vacuity of mind and 
heart has anything restful in it; and hence 
the pleasures of worldly society, far from sat- 
isfying, leave a sense of dreariness and lone- 
liness and weariness upon the spirit. It is 
a species of intoxication, attractive, even fas- 
cinating, for a moment, but leaving its sting 
behind. It is only where the affections have 
instituted a ministry, a permanence of mutual 
service, that the soul really rests and is re- 
freshed. And such a permanent institution 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 141 

we will vainly look for outside the influences 
of God's Word and the Holy Spirit. It is 
not a native growth from man's selfish nature. 
It should be the glory of the church of Christ 
to exhibit this healthy action of a ceaseless 
sympathy between its members, and in such 
activities the Christian should, as we have 
seen, find the very atmosphere he breathes. 

It is a matter of deep concern that we find 
Christ's church so little fulfilling the designs 
of its Lord. Just as the ancient Jews let a 
familiar intercourse with the idolatrous na- 
tions steal away their hearts from God, and 
so, under the claims of business or falsely- 
established relationships, let slip one by one 
the distinctive features of their holy state, 
until the severest chastisements were neces- 
sary to purge them of their corruption and 
bring them back to God; so the church of 
Jesus now is, by its false partnerships with 
an unbelieving world, giving up the divine 
methods of its true life, and yielding itself to 
the pernicious, though often plausible, habits 
of a Christless society, using the arguments 
and reaching the conclusions which are for- 



142 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

eigii to the revelation of God, and directly 
antagonistic to all growth in grace. The de- 
ceitful allurements of riches, the attractions 
of position, the taste for low pleasure are 
more potent than the commands of God, the 
consistency of Christ's truth, the beauty of 
holiness and the raptures of divine commun- 
ion. Can we see the sad repetition of Israel's 
sin without shuddering in expectation of Is- 
rael's fearful chastisement ? Is God going to 
leave his people to corrupt themselves ? "Will 
he not vindicate his truth, w r hile he seeks 
their recovery ? 

Some are ready to say that this is a puri- 
tanic view of things, and by that they would 
mean that we are too stern in our judgment, 
and too strict in our requirements. But to 
the law and to the testimony ! Let them de- 
cide the question for us. " Be ye holy as I 
am holy," is the great command of God to 
you and me, and the way to obey it is in 
Jesus Christ by a life of faith and faith's 
ready obedience. Does the prevailing form 
of Christian society conform to this standard ? 
Is not the ordinary Christian life of to-day a 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 143 

round of woiiclliiiess with a dash of legalistic 
religion thrown in to satisfy conscience ? Are 
not many Christians as mad after money and 
display as the ungodly ? 

I speak with emphasis of this sad condi- 
tion of the church, because reform here must 
really be the basis of all change for the better. 
Of what use is anything else to a body, if 
it breathe foul air? Neither food nor exer- 
cise can save it from disease, if it is inhaling 
poison into the lungs. And if a believer 
remain in full communion with the world, he 
has no power to exercise himself healthfully. 
The sphere of healthy exercise is away from 
him. Give him a social life among God's 
people, and then he can exercise his Chris- 
tian energies to his increase in godliness ; and 
then too the Word of God will nourish him 
aright and Christ be developed in his soul. 
The great want of the church is, therefore, 
separation from the world. Every healthy 
demand of recreation or amusement can be 
found in the Christian society to which God's 
word directs us, while the actions of such a 
society in works of mutual comfort, encour- 



144 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

agement, and help will prove themselves a 
source of permanent pleasure, which has no 
counterpart in the activities of a w r orldly soci- 
ety. The unsatisfying character of w 7 orldly 
society is keenly and sadly felt when its 
ephemeral excitement is over. In spite of our 
efforts to the contrary, it proves hollow and 
mocking. Momentary triumphs and ultimate 
defeat of self mark the history of the soul 
that seeks its pleasure in anything short of 
the divine ; but the soul that seeks its pleas- 
ure in God and his people, that finds its de- 
light in giving and receiving the living sym- 
pathy of truth and holiness, occupies a sphere 
of perennial sunshine. God himself is the 
minister of its pleasures, and he never fails. 
Feverish excitement is exchanged for calm 
repose, in accordance with the promise, " Thou 
wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
stayed on thee." As the world does not give 
the happiness, so the world cannot take it 
away. It is out of its reach. The chains of 
bondage to the world are broken, and the 
soul is free. The unbeliever, as his name 
implies, does not believe that such a life of 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 145 

happiness exists, and with him I do not now 
attempt to argue ; but you, my believing friend, 
know that this truly happy life is within your 
reach, and you ought to know that your con- 
formity to the world is your only hinderance 
to its enjoyment. Is it in vain that I bid you 
listen to your dear Saviour, saying, " I have 
chosen you out of the world;" "I have chosen 
you that ye should go and bring forth fruit ;" 
and again, through his apostle, " Walk as chil- 
dren of light; "have no fellowship with the 
unfruitful works of darkness"? Is it in vain 
that Christ's own people are urged to break 
the alliance with a world that hates Christ? 
I beseech you not to let mere consequences 
come into consideration, when the Saviour's 
command is so explicit and reiterated. Exer- 
cise yourselves unto godliness by a speech 
trained in Christian conversation, and by social 
intimacies that shall further your spiritual 
health, and so supply your spiritual joy. Cast 
off, as Satan's chains, the false excuses about 
the needs of youth and the requirements of 
recreation and the demands of fashion, and 
trust Jesus and Jesus only, as you obey his" 

Healthy Christian. 10 



146 



THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 



commands, letting consequences take care of 
themselves. Then yours will be a symmetrical 
Christ-life, and the spiritual diseases which 
disfigure and desolate the church of Christ 
will leave you to stand before God his noblest 
work, a healthy Christian. 





CHAPTEE X. 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE: IN PER- 
SONAL CULTURE. 




'HE last sphere for the exercise 
of our Christian life, to which I 
would refer, is that of direct personal 
culture. We have considered the op- 
portunities offered in the family, in 
our church relations, in our business, and in 
our social connections. "We now come to the 
man himself. There is a direct work for him- 
self, as w r ell as an indirect work through his 
relation to others. While man is made for 
others, and the great part of his life must be 
shaped amid associational forces, and while 
the Christian's life is no exception to the rule 
but must be very largely intermingled with 
the lives of others, and in this intermingling 



148 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

he finds the elements of a successful and 
healthy growth, still there must be times of 
separation from the great without, a shutting 
up of the soul to its own converse, or rather a 
withdrawing to be with God alone. 

The active, nervous life which we lead in 
this land and age has proved inimical to this 
phase of Christian experience. The Church 
of Christ in our country is an active, bustling 
church, but it cannot be called a meditative 
church ; and so personal Christian experience 
is more apt to assume the energetic than the 
contemplative form. I speak of a ripe and 
healthy experience. 

"We escape some great evils, it is true, by 
this style of development, but w 7 e also lose 
very great advantages. The evils we escape 
are those of morbid self-inspection, wdiich are 
the spiritual diseases of honest monasteries 
and nunneries ; the vain attempt incessantly 
to analyze our own hearts and know them, 
which ends either in conceit or despair ; the 
critical examination of every motive and 
thought ; the dissection and measurement of 
every sin and every grace in us — all w r hich is 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 149 

meddling with the incomprehensible, a very 
vain, puzzling, and calamitous business. These 
are great evils, indeed, which the driving, 
Jehu-like Christian is not liable to suffer from ; 
but there are advantages in temporary isola- 
tion, whose loss he ought not to endure com- 
posedly. A meditative Christian need not be 
a self-scrutinizing Christian. He may look at 
his life historically, without dissecting his own 
heart. The latter work is God's only. " Search 
me, O God," is the psalmist's cry. He did 
not know how to search himself. But while 
we commit this search of our hearts to God, 
our past lives he before us as an historic fact, 
which we can safely contemplate, as we would 
a landscape or a numerical account. We 
ought to make a balance-sheet from time to 
time in our religious life, as we do in our pecu- 
niary concerns. Have I treated my fellow- 
men as a Christian ought to, last week, or last 
month? Have I been searching God's truth 
with more eagerness ? Have I been an exam- 
ple to my family and friends ? Have I sought 
the welfare of others? Have I been regulai 
in my use of the means of growth which God 



150 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

lias provided ? Questions like these have 
nothing sickly in them. They are sound, hon- 
est questions, to be answered according to 
historic fact — very different questions from 
such as these : "Was my motive perfectly pure 
when I gave that dollar to the poor man? 
Did I sufficiently weigh the words of my 
prayer last evening? Is my heart ready to 
make ever y sacrifice for Christ?" It is this 
latter style of questions whose answer involves 
the analysis of a labyrinth, which makes mel- 
ancholy and very useless Christians. Books 
that encourage such an unscriptural self-dis- 
section ought to be burned. But the contem- 
plation of our past life, its outline of hill and 
valley, the way God's mercy has led us, and 
our own failures and progress — this is an easy 
and wholesome duty. The whole Bible urges 
us to it. " See what I have done for you, and 
see how little you have used your advantages," 
is the virtual cry of God to his people all 
through the history of his church. There is 
not one of us who has not a history replete 
with wonders of Divine grace. By looking 
back carefully we can see how God has led us 



THE SOUL'S EXEKCISE. 151 

by ways we knew not ; how trial has borne its 
peaceable fruits of righteousness ; how dangers 
have been thwarted and thrust aside by the 
interposition of providential trifles ; how our 
own errors have brought us injury, and yet 
how God has ever overruled that injury for 
our good ; how, in short, our whole life has 
been a constant discipline of an affectionate 
Heavenly Father. Now, this profiting view 
cannot be enjoyed while in the push and crowd 
of busy lif e. It demands retirement and time. 
The mind must be quiet, so that the memory 
can act soberly and systematically. Yet very 
few Christians apparently feel the importance 
of this tranquil hour of meditation. Perhaps 
they consider it a luxury they can forego, 
rather than a necessity they must seize. They 
hear David say, "I will meditate of all thy 
work," Ps. 77 : 12 ; and again, " I meditate on 
all thy works ; and muse on the work of thy 
hands," Ps. 143 : 5 ; and they think that was 
well for David, so eminent a saint, but they, 
alas ! are too much driven in life for such a 
high enjoyment. Perhaps, however, they deem 
it neither necessity nor luxury, indeed think 



152 THE HEALTHY CHBISTIAN. 

nothing about it, but carelessly lose the benefits 
of this means of grace. 

Another subject of meditation is God's re- 
vealed word. The psalmist is full of this. 
"In God's law doth he meditate day and 
night" (Ps. 1 :2) — this is in his description oi 
a godly man. "I will meditate in thy pre- 
cepts and have respect unto thy ways;" "My 
hands also I will lift up unto thy command- 
ments, which I have loved, and I will meditate 
in thy statutes;" "Mine eyes prevent the 
night watches, that I might meditate in thy 
word ;" "I love thy law — it is my meditation 
all the day ;" " Thy testimonies are my medi- 
tation." These are some of the utterances of 
the godly king himself, and here we see the 
secret of his maintaining his integrity amid 
the fearful temptations of wealth and absolute 
power. There is infinite food for thought in 
the Bible. We must do more than read the 
Bible. A Christian should be like the clean 
beasts of the law, and spend times of rest 
in chewing the cud. The word read should 
be brought up by memory for new and more 
complete digestion, and only in this process 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 153 

can God's word be said to be known. This, 
it will be marked, is a different thing from 
studying the Scriptures, to which an allusion 
has been made under another head. This is 
the revolving of the studied word in our 
thoughts, so as to fit it to our own cases and 
apply it to our own lives. Studying the Word 
implies search with every help of commentary, 
encyclopedia, dictionary, and Scripture com- 
parison that can be obtained ; but meditating 
on the Word is the use of the knowledge of the 
Word thus gained in all its relations to our- 
selves. This meditation on the Word natu- 
rally combines with meditation on our past 
lives, and thus adjustment and improvement 
are suggested. One of the grandest forms of 
this meditation on the Word is found in the 
review of Christ's marvellous work for us. To 
follow the Son of God from heaven to earth, 
to see him a babe at the inn-stable of Bethle- 
hem, a youth at Nazareth, a teacher, wonder- 
worker, and lover of souls in Galilee and 
Judea, to witness his agony in the Garden and 
on the Cross, to behold him bursting the bars 
of the grave, and to look after his receding 



154 THE HEALTHY CHKISTIAN. 

figure in the clouds over Olivet, going to pre- 
pare a place for us — tliese are enjoyments of 
the meditative hour which impress their lasting 
lessons on the heart and life. There, too, we 
ponder on the love that wrought all this, the 
yearning love of Jesus for his own ransomed 
ones ; and there, in an emphatic manner, do we 
talk with Him, really present to our conscious- 
ness. This talking with Jesus is prayer— is 
the confiding speech of a child and not the 
cry of a stranger. It is not a shriek for help, 
but a gentle use of a perpetual help afforded 
in our Lord. Prayer is too often practically 
considered as merely an appeal to mercy, and 
so we who are Christ's are dishonoring him by 
constantly doing over our first works. If we 
are in Christ, his mercy is vouchsafed to us — 
we are already enveloped in his grace. Its 
blessed provisions are secured to us by the 
blood of the covenant. It is true that all we 
receive is based on his wondrous mercy, but 
the prayer of a believer should not be merely 
the cry for mercy, but a child's unbosoming to 
a Father. It is a holy communion with the 
dearest of friends, a putting out of the hand 



THE SOUL'S EXEKCISE. 155 

to receive liis divine gifts, the very luxury of 
dependence upon his bountiful love. It is 
painful to see how some Christians take the 
command to "pray without ceasing" to be an 
order from heaven to cry out continually, 
"Lord, have mercy upon us !" — a very proper j 
cry for the inquirer, the convicted soul, the 
seeking sinner, but as utterly out of place for 
the chief prayer of the believer as would have 
been the cry, "Make me as one of thy hired 
servants," on the part of the prodigal, after he 
had been welcomed and received as a dear 
son into his father's house. If our experiences 
lead us to use only the cry for mercy, it proves 
a very low view of our privileges and a very 
low condition of our piety. False churches 
have encouraged this method of keeping back 
the believer in everlasting babyhood, by which 
system priestcraft has attained its earthly 
ends. We are, of course, always to ask for- 
giveness for our daily errors, but it is to be as 
a child says to his father, " Father, forgive me 
that fault," not as an alien coming now for the 
first to receive pardon for a sinful soul. The 
whole wretched figment of penance is con- 



156 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

structedon this false principle, ignoring Christ's 
atonement once for all, and making, after 
every sad lapse of a believer, a new entrance 
into grace necessary. Superficial observers 
may think this is laying a proper emphasis on 
sin, but it is just the reverse : it is making sin 
a matter of so little moment that a human 
regimen can cure it, while at the same time it 
belittles God's grace, which, if received into 
the soul, is an enemy to sin and takes preee- 
olence there before the eye of God. God's 
grace in the heart is a principle which enables 
the believer to contend against sin, and which 
is both encouragement and pledge of his suc- 
cess ; and to make a believer begin anew, as a 
convicted sinner, to cry for mercy, is to shut 
him out from that gracious advantage and fill 
him with despair. Let us put prayer where 
Jesus puts it. It begins with " Our Father." 
The rest all flows from that. When prayer is 
thus viewed, lifted up from the low position it 
holds in so many minds, and made a trans- 
porting communion with God, then the com- 
mand to pray without ceasing is equivalent to 
a divine authorization to walk with God all 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 157 

the time and to enjoy a heavenly happiness in 
the midst of all our earthly vicissitudes. The 
command shows that we can carry the prayer- 
ful spirit with us in all our business of life, but 
still there must be opportunities secured from 
life's business, where the whole attention of the 
soul may be given to this sublime exercise. 
The laws of our spiritual nature demand this, 
as well as the command of our Saviour con- 
cerning closet prayer. Yfe cannot trust our 
souls for any spiritual exercise in its full force 
while the mind is absorbed in any external 
business. The soul that thinks it can catch 
•its food as it goes will grow lean. There is 
such a thing as cultivating everybody's garden 
but our own. 

Daniel's "three times a day" and David's 
"seven times a day" were stated periods of 
retirement for prayer and communion with 
God of men who were overwhelmed with the 
affairs of state, fully as busy as the busiest 
man in any commercial city. There these 
holy men gained the beauty of their spiritual 
character. When prayer is regarded in this 
its high and true character, there can be no 



158 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

formality, no legalistic dragging in the exer- 
cise. 

One other private exercise of the Christian 
life I wish to mention, which, however, has a 
public side. I refer to the use of the Lord's 
Supper. The communion of the Lord's Sup- 
per is not the communion of saints, but the 
communion of the body and blood of Christ. 
We do meet together and hold communion 
with one another at the same time, but the 
essence of the exercise is in our communion 
with our Lord, and hence the name. The 
Lord's Supper is the central exercise of Christ's 
Church. It is the emblematic service respect- 
ing the central fact of our redemption. It is 
the gospel in token. In the apostolic church, 
the Lord's Supper was partaken of every 
Lord's Day. Around it gathered the worship 
and instruction of the church. The apostle 
Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, 
sets forth its prominence, while he guards it 
from perversion. It has been the fault of 
many Protestant bodies, in practical protest 
against the magical character which the Ro- 
man Church gave it, to diminish the real 



THE SOUL'S EXERCISE. 159 

importance of the Eucharist as a means of 
grace, an ordained exercise of the Christian 
soul. "We must avoid both extremes. On one 
hand we must recognize from Scripture that 
there is no mystic power in the elements or 
the minister — that there is no material grace 
or condemnation in the service, but that our 
faith in Jesus and his word gives it all its 
value to us, and our want of faith in Jesus 
and his word gives it all its power to harm us, 
as a holy exercise engaged in with a careless, 
God-defying spirit. Then, on the other hand, 
we must not treat it as a mere external ser- 
vice — to be used or not, as the whim may take 
us — of small account if we have the truth in 
our hearts. Our Saviour would not have in- 
stituted it if it was of small importance. Every 
thing he ordered is and must be of importance. 
He commanded it, and therefore there is grace 
to be found in it by a faithful soul, which it 
cannot afford to spare. 

The Eucharist is, as its name signifies, a 
thanksgiving service. It is concentrated praise 
for redeeming love, or rather for an accom- 
plished redemption. It is the glad reception 



160 THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN. 

of a pledge from God, and the kernel of the 
exercise is in the individual soul thus taking 
gladly and thankfully this pledge from the 
hand of God. There is no exercise more 
simple, none more imposing, none more profit- 
able. It is not a form, but a power, and that 
power is realized through plain faith. 

That a Christian should stay away from this 
communion is as unreasonable as that he 
should abandon prayer or the study of the 
word. If he stay away from fear, he is super- 
stitious. If he stay away from worldliness, 
he is a backslider. In both cases he is aban- 
doning a means of grace, and disobeying the 
express commands of his Lord. He should 
view it in its private character, in its relations 
to himself, as a means of direct personal cul- 
ture in holiness, if he would rightly estimate 
his partaking or abstaining. When faith 
lays hold of Jesus in his ordinance — when, to 
use the apostle's phrase, we " discern the 
Lord's body" — then the Eucharist is a service 
of glory, a refreshing from the presence of the 
Lord. 

We thus see that every believer has his own 



THE SOUL'S EXEKCISE. 161 

soul to cherish, his own piety to cultivate, by 
a direct culture, as well as by his active rela- 
tions with others, for which time must be used 
at whatever cost, and for neglect of which no 
excuse of worldly care can stand for a moment 
before the tribunal of God or the conscience, 
and which, moreover, will bring its own pecu- 
liar reward by a heavenly vantage over all the 
possible trials of life. It is the exercise w T hich 
fits the soul for all other exercise. Without 
it, every aspect of the Christian life will be 
disfigured. 




Healthy Christian. H 





A CLOSING WORD, 

r E have endeavored to follow 
the analogy of the body, in 
treating of the soul, and to show 
what are the believer's spiritual 
food, air, and exercise, by the right 
use of which his spiritual life will be sound 
and vigorous, by which both the blood-system 
and nerve-system of the soul, the indwelling 
of Christ and the Holy Spirit, will be main- 
tained as against the powerful adversaries of 
the divine life which are so abundant and be- 
setting in this sin-smitten earth. 

Truth is an exotic here. It must be pre- 
served by extraordinary measures. The Lord 
bids his people to be ever watchful. The vigi- 
lance of faith has a divine guarantee. It will 
surely accomplish its end. But whiere there 
is consent to the world's style of life, the 
world's aims or the world's system of ethical 



A CLOSING WORD. 1G3 

law, there is tlie betrayal of the divine trust, 
the defilement of the holy place. 

Our citizenship is in heaven. We confess 
we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 
They that say such things declare plainly that 
they seek a country. They desire a better 
country : that is, a heavenly. It is with this 
prospect in view, and in this habit of mind 
and heart, that we are called upon to preserve 
and nourish what the grace of God in Christ 
Jesus has bestowed upon us. 

The children of Israel at Sinai received a 
complete law for their future habitation in 
Palestine. But while still in the desert they 
were to cherish that law, and use all that could 
be used in the wilderness- situation. So are 
we, fellow-Christians, furnished with a divine 
law in Christ for our heavenly home ; but 
here, on our pilgrimage, is that law of holi- 
ness to be cherished and employed to the 
fullest possible anticipation of the perfected 
state. We are a separated people. Let us 
not break down the holy barriers our God has 
put up. 



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Welcome to the little exiles from abroad. Two Cuts. 

The Missing Boat. 

The perils of mischief, and safety of true repentance. 
With Cuts. 

Madeline. 
The history of a New England girl. Illustrated. 

A Little More. 

The value of contentment. Two Engravings. 

The Light-house Boy. 

A moral light-house for boys. 

PUBLISHED AND FOR SALE BY 

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 

And for sale at 116 Washington-st. , BOSTON; 1408 
Chestnut- st., PHILADELPHIA; and in other cities and 
towns. 



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